


Teachers' Salary

by cherrysprite



Series: Quarantine Fics [22]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bars and Pubs, Businessman Theo Raeken, Complete, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Making Out, Mild Sexual Content, Minor age difference, Mutual Pining, Neck Kissing, Past Tracy Stewart/Theo Raeken, Pining, Rich Theo Raeken, Single Parent Theo Raeken, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Teacher Liam Dunbar, Tension, Theo has a son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 59,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24466108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrysprite/pseuds/cherrysprite
Summary: Liam loves his job as a history teacher. Shaping young minds and sharing his passions with students is one of the best parts of his chaotic, unorganized life, but there's always a student in every class who doesn't feel the same. This semester, that student happens to be Jack Raeken, who's always kicking over the trash bin and refusing to do his work. Liam's seen it before.What Liamhasn'tseen before is someone like Theo, a divorced, arrogant, multi-million dollar company owner - and Jack's father.Liam's pay is too low for this.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken
Series: Quarantine Fics [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691383
Comments: 260
Kudos: 357





	1. Devil Child

**Author's Note:**

> I want to start by clarifying that a lot of the events in the beginning chapters are inspired by the TV show New Girl! If you're familiar with New Girl, you may know about a minor storyline that happens in season one, and you'll be able to see the similarities between the show and this fic. It's mostly the parts about Liam's roommates and the teacher/parent dynamic. After the first few chapter, the plot differs from the show a lot more than it does here.

Liam could still hear the yelling from his roommates when he shut the front door to his house, letting out a relieved and exasperated breath as he straightened his blue tie in the collar of his white button-down. Just a second before, Nolan had accidentally knocked over an entire carton of orange juice all over a freshly-showered Corey and Mason’s phone that had been sitting on the kitchen table, which pretty much summed up what life was like for Liam. He could vaguely hear Nolan trying to defend himself with a string of insults and he chuckled to himself as he got in his car, ignoring the creaking of the door.

For most people, going to work wasn’t considered a relieving experience, but Liam couldn’t say the same. He loved his roommates and the house they decided to rent after the four of them graduated high school together, but they were loud. That wasn’t to say that the high schoolers he taught history to every day weren’t loud, - they were, and excessively so at times - they were just easier to deal with. The antics that went on at Beacon Hills High School weren’t all that different than the ones that went on in the Dunbar-Hewitt-Bryant-Holloway house, but at least he got his peace and quiet before the students got there.

Liam breathed in deep when he stepped into his classroom, looking around it with a smile on his face. This classroom held more memories than he could talk about all at once, and not even just with him teaching, either. Just years ago, he’d walked into this classroom without many expectations for it. Little did he know as a naive sixteen year old that history would soon become his favorite subject, and he’d meet Mr. Philips, the history teacher who made it his goal to make sure Liam graduated high school.

Mr. Philips didn’t teach at Beacon Hills anymore - he’d retired the same year Liam graduated with his education degree. Liam liked to think that he did that on purpose so Liam could fill his spot on the staff. When he joked about it, Mr. Philips always just gave a wink and the same knowing smile as he used to do when Liam was still in high school. Room A109 went from having the “Philips” to “Dunbar” doorplate on it with no vacancy in between.

Liam loved his job. Ever since he’d met Mr. Philips, he’d thought about going into teaching to do the same things Mr. Philips did. He wanted to be the cool history teacher that everyone loved from the time he was sixteen to now, at almost twenty-six, setting down his coffee on his desk.

He looked forward to coming in every day, which was more than his other friends with jobs could say, but he didn’t doubt it for even a second. He got to teach about what he loved for three ninety-minute periods each day with breaks for prep and lunch, and the social side of him got to be around a ton of people. He always loved being in a place where he could joke around and people got him, and a lot of the time, those people were his students. Above all, that was the part of his job he loved the most. Everyone had their own personalities and interests, and Liam always ended up learning a new thing or two from some of them by the time their semester with him was over. 

This year was Liam’s fourth year of teaching, which meant he had seen an entire class of students grow from freshmen to seniors. It was overwhelming to realize that he had been a part of such an important part of these kids’ lives. Nolan had once caught him looking up ways to avoid crying - he was already preparing for graduation a few months ahead. 

Of course, even though he loved every student and believed all of them had potential, there were a few who would be... _ easier _ to see go, is all. 

The one in particular that he was thinking about was still a sophomore, so he didn’t feel too bad about it. 

In Liam’s four years of teaching, he knew the patterns of students. There were the overachievers who tried too hard and tended to be a little annoying when he first met them. Then there was the general populace of his classes, the ones who did well but kept their heads down for the most part. Those were the students he tended to get along best with, since even the ones who had been planning to ignore him for the semester couldn’t resist his cringe-worthy jokes. 

On the opposite end of the overachievers, there was Jack Raeken. 

Liam tried to keep an open mind about everyone who came into his class, but he’d suspected from the beginning that things with Jack weren’t going to be easy. When he’d seen Jack come up in his class roster for the second semester of the 2019-2020 school year, he’d admittedly been less than excited. Jack had a big record when it came to his behavior, his digital files showing all of the write-ups, detentions, and other forms of punishment he’d accumulated from his teachers for the first three semesters he had at Beacon Hills High. Seeing him walk into his classroom on his first day in Liam’s history class hadn’t been too promising either; he’d come in without a word, ignored the assigned seating, and then didn’t get the syllabus signed like he was supposed to.

When he wasn’t being quiet and ignoring Liam, he was doing the exact opposite. He talked during class, he was purposely annoying when he was supposed to be quiet, and he disturbed other students while they were working. At first Liam had wondered what he had done to make Jack hate him and the class so much, but then he’d realized that he hadn’t done anything and Jack just wanted attention. 

Liam understood how teenage boys worked when they were under stress, and Jack matched the classic case almost to a T. Another thing Liam saw in his records was his home information. Apparently, his mother and father had divorced a few years back and Jack was bouncing around from home to home under split custody agreements. It didn’t matter how much Jack tried to brag about how well-off he apparently was to his friends, hiding that there were any problems at all; Liam knew how stressful a divorce could be on a kid who was already going through the natural struggles of high school life.

So Liam tried to be as patient with him as humanly possible, which meant overlooking a lot of his behavior and his lack of interest in doing work in Liam’s class. On the rare occasion that Jack did turn in his work, they were always at least high-B assignments, so Liam was willing to give Jack a break for a while.

However, when he fired up his desktop computer that morning to an email from Natalie Martin, the principal, reminding Liam that Jack’s average had dropped significantly, he knew things would have to change, at least grades-wise. He’d been trying to let Jack do his work independently instead of babying him, but once Principal Martin stepped in, there wasn’t a lot of other choices for what he could do. He had to do things directly.

He thought about it when he had the time during his first period class where his students were taking a quiz, and he decided that if Jack ignored the classwork assignment for that day, he would talk to him directly about it, even though he really,  _ really _ didn’t want to. Once the first period class filtered out and the first few students from the second period class started coming in slowly, Liam passed out pieces of lined paper to everyone’s desk and wrote instructions at the top of the chalkboard for them to answer the questions from the textbook as a warmup. All they had to do was three questions, answer in two sentences each, and then define the key words that were highlighted in the textbook.

Jack walked in, glanced at the chalkboard, and rolled his eyes, which wasn’t a good sign. At least by now he had gotten the hint that he had to stay in his assigned seat, which was in the second row and against the wall. He sat down and took out his phone, looking at the door every now and then while he waited for his friends to show up. He greeted them with a smile and a nod when they did. They sat down behind and in front of him, reminding Liam how much he regretted his randomized seating chart decision.

After he told them what they were supposed to be doing, he internally gave Jack ten minutes to start on the assignment before he’d go over and talk to him. While Liam did his own work, he checked on Jack every couple minutes, but he unfortunately wasn’t going anything. Liam sighed quietly to himself as he saw that his computer clock had advanced ten minutes and he had to go over.

He approached Jack as casually as he could, a polite smile on his face. The music playing through Jack’s earbuds was loud enough that Liam could hear it when he got to his desk, so instead of talking to him, he tapped softly on the surface of his unopened textbook to get his attention. Jack at least had the decency to pull out one earbud even if he looked disinterested in what Liam was going to say. “Yes, Mr. Dunbar?” Jack asked, annoyed and sarcastically polite. Kyle and Jayden, Jack’s friends, snickered to themselves. 

Liam smiled at him. “Hey, do you need help on the assignment? I noticed you’re not doing it,” He said. Jack shook his head and went back to scrolling on his phone. “Well, is there some other reason you’re not doing it?” Liam asked nicely.

Jack shrugged as he typed out a response to a snapchat. “Didn’t feel like it,” He said. Liam bit the inside of his mouth. Jack never made these things easy for him.

“Okay...I understand opting out of an assignment here and there because you’re tired or stressed out, but if I have to keep putting zeros in for your missing assignments, I don’t know how much time you’ll have left before the end of the year to pull your grade back up to passing,” Liam explained. Jack raised an eyebrow at him like he was offended that Liam had even mentioned his grades. “You don’t want to have to repeat sophomore year, do you?” Liam asked, only-somewhat joking in nature.

That time, Jack grinned. “No, I don’t!  _ That _ would mean I’d have to take  _ this _ class again!” He said fake-brightly, making the other students in the class burst into quiet fits of laughter. Liam shut his eyes and sighed to himself. He wanted to say something else, but after that, he wasn’t really sure what else would make sense.

Liam turned to walk back to his desk, and he was almost there by the time Jack spoke up again while his back was turned. “Have you ever considered that I’m failing your class because I don’t  _ give _ a fuck about it?” He asked, and that time, nobody even tried to hide their laughs. Liam went rigid and turned to face him; Jack still had a smug grin on his face and was leaning back in his chair carelessly.

Liam thanked God that he was better at controlling himself as an adult, because back in high school and college, he would have already felt the anger brimming up. He settled for clenching one of his fists by his side instead, keeping a calm tone. “Alright, I’ve been patient with you all semester, but I  _ have _ to write you up for that,” Liam said, sounding as tired as he felt. 

Jack, who had already been written up that day from what Liam had seen, was obviously unaffected by that. He widened his eyes and put his hands up, and even shuddered in mock fear for dramatic effect. Liam rolled his eyes and went back to his desk.

Well, he wasn’t entirely unaffected. As Jack left the classroom, he purposely kicked the trash bin next to Liam’s desk, and to add insult to injury, he came all the way back into the classroom when he realized that it hadn’t fallen over the first time to make sure it definitely fell the second time. He grinned at Liam and then left, knowing that Liam wasn’t going to yell at him, and Liam sighed.

  
It was times like these that he was incredibly sorry for what he’d put his teachers through back when he was in high school.

+++

On the bright side, after second period Liam had his lunch break, so he had a little time to cool off before he had to see the rest of his students. He took his lunch out of his lunchbag and set it down on his desk, deciding then that he didn’t want to go down to lunch with the rest of the teachers in the teachers’ lounge. They’d undoubtedly ask him about how Jack had done in class that day, looking to get a new and interesting answer like they usually did, and Liam wasn’t in the mood to talk about it.

He may have had some unruly students before, but nobody had ever straight-up told him that they  _ didn’t give a fuck. _ He’d never even been cursed at before, not to his  _ face _ , anyway, so trying to deal with that had really zapped his energy.

He chewed on his sandwich while thinking about what to do in terms of Jack’s punishment, which was harder than it would have been for another student. 

He didn’t want Jack to be in trouble, but he couldn’t just do nothing. That would be unfair to the other students he’d had to report for bad behavior if he let Jack get away with it, even if he was kind of a special case. It was even unfair to the students who didn’t get in trouble. Liam wasn’t dumb; he saw how annoyed and stressed out Jack made them at times when they were just trying to do their work. He had to at least try something.

Liam went into Jack’s online records again and looked through his reports. Liam tended to be pretty easygoing and conflict-avoidant when it came to giving out write-ups and office referrals, but he knew that some of his co-workers didn’t share that same philosophy. They would write people up for every other thing someone did, which meant Jack had a lot of complaints in his file. Sure, some of them were valid, like the time he apparently threw a fruit cup at the ceiling in the cafeteria, but some of the things he was being reported for weren’t things Liam would have jumped to conclusions about.

As he looked through them all, he noticed one thing in surprise and disgust. When Jack’s teachers had requested a specific action to be taken, there were only requests for him to be sent to see the principal, detentions, or in-school suspensions. There wasn’t a single request for him to see a guidance counselor to talk, and no one had made any attempt  _ at all _ to contact one of Jack’s parents.

Liam couldn’t believe it. Everyone had access to the same files that Liam did, so everyone knew that Jack’s life couldn’t be the easiest. Either they didn’t notice or they simply didn’t care, which made Liam feel sick. 

If one of his teachers hadn’t cared about Liam, he had no idea where he’d be now. He knew what he wanted to do.

He decided to put in a complaint so that Jack didn’t think he was getting out of any consequences, but he also checked the page in his files with contact numbers and addresses. The first name he saw was for Jack’s father, Theo Raeken, and he quickly opened up a new email draft to give him a message.

He typed out a message asking if they could talk, and Mr. Raeken responded a few minutes later telling him that he could be at the school at five if that worked. Liam had meetings after school that day anyway, so he agreed, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to stay just a little longer afterwards.

+++

Mr. Raeken was late to the meeting, but Liam took the time to clean up his classroom some more before the night janitors came in to deal with it. His last period class had done projects involving glue and construction paper, so there were a lot of leftover sticky surfaces and scraps of colored paper on the floor and desks that would be annoying to clean up. Liam liked to make things as easy for everyone else as he could, so he started picking them up himself, even though half-dried glue was gross on his fingertips.

He started at the back of the room, where the mess had been the largest from kids thinking they’d be able to get away with leaving things around where Liam couldn’t see it. Liam rolled his eyes exasperatedly. He wasn’t blind, believe it or not. As fun as teaching could be, sometimes he wondered if he was actually teaching elementary schoolers.

He was going towards the trash bin to throw out a handful of scraps when Mr. Raeken finally came in. It was unmistakable who he was - he and Jack shared a lot of similarities, having the same nose and already detectable “superior” disposition. He was still dressed in a suit and tie and stood just a little bit taller than Liam, but he still seemed to have mastered the ability to appear more intimidating than everyone else. Liam pushed back on those thoughts, thinking that he was just being biased. Just because Jack was a bit arrogant didn’t mean he got it from his father. 

“Hi, I’m Mr. Dunbar, you can call me Liam,” Liam said, offering a hand to shake and briefly forgetting that his fingers were still sticky from glue. Mr. Raeken looked down at their joined hands, raising an eyebrow as his lips parted. Liam pulled his hand away quickly. “Oh my God, I’m sorry, we did projects today and I was just cleaning up the mess,” He explained as Mr. Raeken slowly lowered his hand back down. Mr. Raeken looked him up and down, his eyes pausing on Liam’s shirt. There was a pink scrap of construction paper stuck there. Liam pulled it off without another word, wondering how much more of a fool he could make of himself. “Thank you for meeting with me today.”

“You said you wanted to talk about Jack?” Mr. Raeken asked, straight to the point. Liam nodded.

“Yeah, there have been a few...issues that I think should be worked out.”

Mr. Raeken raised an eyebrow. “What  _ ‘issues?’” _ He asked challengingly, and Liam bit down on his negative thoughts about him that had been trying to pop up before.

Liam faltered for a second. Usually there was a lot more padding when it came to teacher-parent conversations so that Liam could ease them both into the tough stuff, but Mr. Raeken wasn’t allowing any of that. 

“W-well, I mentioned in my email that Jack’s average in this class has been floating around in the sixties range for about two weeks now, and as you know, we only have about four months left of the year for him to get his grades back up to passing. I have no doubt that he has the potential to do this, that’s not the problem...it’s just that I’m starting to think he simply won’t,” Liam explained. “I’ve made a lot of exceptions for him. I offer a lot of extra credit to the class and encourage him to do it, I allow him later due dates, and I’ve even started assigning less work so that he doesn’t feel overwhelmed, but I can’t keep doing that and risk affecting my other students’ grades. I’ve tried to let him do his own thing, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that  _ ‘doing his own thing’  _ means doing nothing at all, so I need to know what you think the next step should be to help him.” Liam was good enough at teacher-speak to get that much out of the way.

Mr. Raeken seemed to think about this, but only for a second. “Okay, so I’ll set him up with a tutor. It’ll be no problem, his grades will be back up in no time.”

Liam wanted to be satisfied with that, but he knew that wasn’t it. “That’s not all,” He said before Mr. Raeken could try and leave it at that. Liam took a breath. Parents liked  _ this _ conversation considerably less. “...There’s also some... _ behavioral _ issues that I’ve been seeing in Jack since I’ve known him. He’s constantly disruptive to my teaching and other students, and disrespectful when he is.”

Mr. Raeken gave him a half-apologetic look. “Yeah, sorry about that. Teenagers get like that,” He said as if Liam didn’t know.

Liam forced himself into a tight-lipped smile. “I know. I’ve been one and I teach them, but I have to say that his behavior isn’t the typical disinterested teenager type. Today he asked me, pardon my language,  _ ‘have you ever considered that I’m failing this class because I don’t give a fuck about it,’ _ which I can’t excuse and leads me to believe that he’s not struggling because he doesn’t understand, it’s because he just doesn’t want to do work. Believe me, when he  _ does _ turn in work, he clearly understands what he’s talking about. It’s some of the best work I’ve ever received. The only thing he’s lacking is motivation.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Raeken said, hissing through perfectly white teeth. “He gets like that sometimes, I’m sorry. I’ll talk to him about his grades and the tutor.”

Mr. Raeken turned to walk out of the classroom, and Liam couldn’t help but feel like he was being entirely ignored. At first when he opened his mouth to call him back, he floundered and couldn’t find any words. The ones that came out next weren’t great, either.

“How are things at home?” Liam blurted before he reached the door.

Mr. Raeken paused and turned to look at him incredulously. “ _ Excuse _ me?” He asked, sounding offended, and Liam knew then that he could have been a little more tactful about that. Liam internally groaned but kept his chin up, although it was hard. The kind of stare he got didn’t do much when Jack tried it on him, but Mr. Raeken was practiced and cold. It made Liam want to back down.

  
Liam struggled for words again. “I-I was just wondering if there were any... _ circumstances _ outside of school that I should know about in order for me to try and understand why he’s acting out so I can help him better,” Liam said. “I’ve found kids this age tend to act out when they’re faced with certain things. Things like stress outside of the classroom with friends, or…” Liam briefly remembered that Mr. Raeken was divorced, but he continued anyway as Mr. Raeken’s hard stare demanded more explanation. “...family issues.”

Any hint of pity-filled amusement was gone off of Mr. Raeken’s face and replaced with pure disdain. “Things at home are  _ fine _ ,” Mr. Raeken said firmly, scowling at him. Liam nodded, forcing another apologetic smile, but he wasn’t having any of Liam’s niceties at all anymore. “That’s not your place to speak anyway. You’re a teacher. Your job is to teach, not get into personal matters that have nothing to do with your class,” Mr. Raeken said. He looked Liam up and down one last time, disgust clear on his face. “I’ll get him the tutor.” 

With that, Theo left, leaving Liam standing alone in his classroom feeling thoroughly yelled at. He released a breath he’d unknowingly been holding while Mr. Raeken talked and shut his eyes, rubbing his hands over his face. A piece of paper hit him in the eye - there had been another scrap of light blue on Liam’s collar the entire time he was talking to him.

This was low on the list of Thursday afternoons Liam had had.

+++

Liam came home late and dropped his messenger bag right on the floor by the door, longing for the couch and the leftovers from last night’s takeout dinner. He headed straight for the kitchen to grab his cold lo mein and a fork before going to the living room.

Mason and Corey were being all cute and couple-y as usual while Corey typed on his laptop and Nolan was eating a bag of chips while watching the recorded football game. Liam flopped down on the couch hard, drawing an indignant noise out of Nolan as he almost caught an elbow to the face. Liam couldn’t bring himself to care as he stuffed a bunch of noodles into his mouth. 

“I may have just royally fucked up,” Liam said when he took a few bites and was settled in, having taken off his tie. Mason chuckled and Corey tore his eyes away from his screen to spare him a second. 

“What’d you do?” Corey asked.

“You guys know about Jack Raeken, right?” Liam asked. All three of the others looked at each other.

“Uh, yeah, we know about Jack Raeken, the devil child you talk about  _ constantly _ ,” Nolan scoffed, trying to steal a noodle out of Liam’s box. Liam swatted his hand away and sighed.

“Don’t call him that, he’s just a kid. Anyway, I had the great pleasure of meeting his  _ father _ today. It went just about as well as it could’ve for the guy basically just being a bigger version of his kid.”

“How’d you end up meeting his  _ father _ ?” Mason laughed at the absurdity of it. 

Liam rubbed the space between his eyebrows. “Today he told me that he was failing my class because he ‘doesn’t give a fuck,’ so I asked if he wanted to meet, and the guy totally let me have it, even though I was kind of  _ right _ to ask if there were any issues at home that might be making him act like that.”

Nolan snorted. “Yeah, people tend to get a little upset when you question their parenting skills,” he said.

Liam rolled his eyes. “I never said he was a  _ bad father, _ even though probably  _ is _ , because  _ God _ , that kid screams _ ‘daddy issues,’ _ but I never  _ said _ that!” Liam leaned back on the couch heavily with a sigh.

+++

Liam came into work the next day, a Friday morning, with an optimistic outlook like he always tried to have. He went through the motions of getting settled in, sipping at his coffee, and checking his emails, but he didn’t get too far before he heard the lock on the door turning.

Only two people had master keys to the school, and the night janitors obviously weren’t there. Liam bit back a groan as black heels hit the tile floors of his classroom, knowing he had approximately a quarter of a second before he was going to get yelled at. He was right.

“Did you talk to _Theo_ _Raeken_ yesterday?” Principal Martin demanded before she even reached Liam’s desk, and Liam bit the inside of his cheek. She didn’t wait for his response, her eyes already flaming as Liam floundered. “I got a call from him complaining about your behavior when he saw you yesterday afternoon. Did you tell him he was a _bad_ _father_?”

_ “No!” _ Liam exclaimed.  _ God _ , why was everyone trying to make him the villain here? “No, of  _ course _ not! I only talked to him about his son’s grades and the blatant disrespect he shows in this classroom. I never meant for anything to sound judgmental towards Mr. Raeken himself.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter much,  _ does _ it?” Mrs. Martin snapped. She paused for a minute, closing her eyes, clenching her fists, and taking a deep breath. Her tone was eerily calm and downright scary with the forced smile she paired with it. “Listen, Liam. I know your intentions were probably good when you brought up family life with Mr. Raeken, but you have to understand where I’m coming from here when I say never to question him.  _ God _ , don’t question anybody,  _ especially _ not Theo Raeken. Does that name ring a bell to you at all?” She asked.

Liam opened his mouth, trying to think through his panic where he’d heard the name before, but he came up blank. “N-no-”

“Well, you may not know how the budget system at this school works, but I sure as hell do. Theo Raeken  _ is _ the budget system as far as any of us are concerned. The only thing you need to worry your pretty, stupid little head about when it comes to Mr. Raeken is that he’s  _ rich _ , and what he says goes. If he says Jack doesn’t need help and his family life is fine, then it’s  _ fine _ ,” Mrs. Martin stressed. “Liam, believe me. Jack Raeken is a menace and I want something done about it too, but as long as Theo’s money is still coming to this school, we have to grin and bear it. So next time you even  _ think _ about saying something to Theo, don’t. Instead, think about your precious paycheck getting ripped up, because if we lose Theo as a donor, that might as well just be what happens.”

Liam nodded dumbly, looking up at her. “Okay, I’m sorry, Mrs. Martin,” He stammered. 

Mrs. Martin’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and Liam fought the urge to shiver. She was just as scary now as she was when she was Liam’s principal. “It’s not  _ me _ you have to be sorry to, Liam. You need to apologize to Mr. Raeken,  _ genuinely _ and  _ in-person _ , and make sure he doesn’t pull his donation to the school. After that, you mind your own business. That means you don’t even  _ look _ at Jack Raeken with a question in your eye anymore, understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Liam said, holding his breath.

Mrs. Martin nodded. “Good. Now I suggest you see when you can meet with Mr. Raeken on  _ his _ schedule,” She said as she started walking towards the door. “And don’t fuck this up,” She said, peeking her head around the door before it closed.

Liam was frozen for an entire three seconds before he bursted into action, rushing to open a new email. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,  _ fuck… _ ” He whispered to himself as he frantically clicked around at his computer, which had seemingly forgotten that running at 90’s computer speed wasn’t okay anymore.

Seven minutes of feverishly typing and editing a new email to Mr. Raeken, he finally was able to read it over and hit send.

_ TO:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts. _ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ net _ _   
_ _ FROM:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _   
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ SUBJECT: Meeting _ _   
_ _ Mr. Raeken, _ _   
_ _ Hi, it’s Liam again. I’m afraid that we may have gotten off on the wrong foot yesterday afternoon. I wanted to let you know that I genuinely meant no harm with my comments, and I understand how completely inappropriate they were to say. I understand that it was and is not my place to comment on personal matters, and I will keep this in mind in the future.  _ _   
_ _ If you are interested in meeting in person, I would love to know when we could get in contact to discuss this matter further. _

_ Liam Dunbar _ _   
_ _ History Teacher _ _   
_ _ Beacon Hills High School _

The reply came a half hour later, digging into Liam’s first period classtime, but he rushed to check it anyway.

_ TO:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _   
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ FROM:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.net _ _   
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ SUBJECT: Re: Meeting _ __   
_ I would appreciate that. However, I am unfortunately away on business this week, so our meeting will have to wait until at least this Friday. You can meet me there at my home office after your workday is over. _ _   
_ __ Theo Raeken

Liam’s only response was to hit his head on his desk, ignoring the laughs of his students.


	2. Rich People Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam goes to apologize to Theo a week later, but he's had a lot of time to think, and he's not too into it.

Liam spent that week practicing what he was going to say to Theo, since Mrs. Martin had basically been hammering it into his skull  _ every _ day at work that he’d better be prepared. He was trying to find the right balance between apologetic and strong, because really, he was starting not to care about the actual apology. 

His practice would have been a lot smoother if Liam actually knew what he was apologizing for. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t do anything wrong. Sure, his comments may have rubbed Theo the wrong way, but they weren’t anything different from what he usually said. Theo just happened to be sensitive about it. This kind of reminded Liam about the time his mother made him apologize for giving a kid who wasn’t allowed sugar some candy back in elementary school. The intentions were good; the outcome wasn’t.

The more he had time to stew about it, the less he wanted to apologize to Theo. The idea of groveling -  _ and for what, trying to discipline a kid? Doing his fucking job? _ \- made Liam roll his eyes every time he was reminded of it.

No matter what Theo cared about or wanted to believe, his son was one of the most disrespectful, difficult to work with students that Liam had ever met. Jack Raeken managed to shake Liam’s morals of “loving every student” dangerously close to “loving  _ some _ students,” and it pissed him off that when he tried to do something right, he  _ still _ got yelled at. Either way, he was stuck. 

Then there was the issue of Jack’s grades. It didn’t only reflect badly on Liam if Jack failed, it irritated Liam that he didn’t have to fail. Jack may not behave like other students do, but he was intelligent, and it was a tragedy that he doesn’t put in any effort. Liam has weekly assignments to summarize and analyze current events that are happening, and back when Jack used to turn them in, they were some of the best ones he’d ever gotten. He had strong, good opinions with facts and evidence to back every bit up, and he was thoughtful about everything he said. If Jack weren’t so focused on slacking off, Liam thought he could go really far with what he’s been blessed with. It was frustrating that some part of Jack cared about the class, and he just wasn’t doing anything with it. Liam didn’t want him to fail because of missed work, and Theo needed to know that.

But the most frustrating of all was something else.

Jack’s  _ father _ . Sir Douchebag the Third had talked to him like Liam didn’t understand what he was talking about. It was as if he was some  _ peasant _ to whatever king Theo Raeken thought of himself as, acting like everything Liam said was irrational and wrong. 

Liam knew how teenagers worked, especially ones under stress, and that was the worst part.

Liam and his friend group in high school had all been perfect examples of the differences between them. Mason, Corey, and Nolan were all honors students with A’s and B’s in every class. They came from stable, loving families and they functioned like the well-rounded, ready-for-the-world boys they were. Mason was a part of six different clubs and graduated with a 4.8 GPA, which Liam hadn’t thought was even possible, Nolan was co-captain and one of the star players on the lacrosse team, loved by everyone, and Corey received awards and scholarships for all of the community outreach and volunteer service work he completed in his high school years. All three of them were well on their way to great things by the time they were sixteen.

When  _ Liam _ was sixteen, things were a lot different for him. He went into freshman year with high hopes, but by the end of it, he could barely focus on any work and didn’t care about it, either. It was a  _ miracle _ he’d made it to sophomore year after a  _ terrible _ summer, and things got even worse.

Liam used to be the  _ Jack _ of his class. He was a  _ terrible _ student even when he understood the things that were put in front of him, and he put his teachers through hell. He keyed cars just to get the shit beaten out of him for fun, stole things he didn’t need just to have them, and picked fights whenever he could, with students  _ and _ teachers.

When Liam was sixteen, he didn’t think he was going to go anywhere in life, and that was because of his  _ family _ .

His father was still in the picture when he was sixteen, the bastard that he was, so it  _ had _ been family that had ripped Liam apart. If one of his teachers, Mr. Philips, hadn’t said something and tried to help, he probably wouldn’t have gotten anywhere at all.

But Theo Raeken had looked at him like he was disgusting for even  _ thinking _ that something might be wrong, and it made Liam’s blood boil. As intimidating as Theo was, he’d gone from apologetic and stunned to hating the man in only a few days, and Liam couldn’t get past it.

He was still fuming about it on Wednesday morning, stirring his coffee around in his travel mug and scowling into it. 

“You just have to fake it,” Nolan said as he was getting his breakfast ready. “That’s what I do, but you’d probably do it better. You just have to use that voice you always use.”

Liam sighed. “What voice?” He asked.

“Y’know, the  _ voice _ ,” Nolan said. Liam looked at him through his eyelashes, not finding Nolan helpful at all. “The voice you use when you’re trying to get more free drinks out of Alec’s co-workers at the bar! That voice.”

“Flirty?” Liam scoffed.

“No,  _ relatable _ ,” Nolan corrected. “Trying to seduce him probably wouldn’t go over too well.. Not if you’re trying not to get  _ fired _ , at least.”

Liam rolled his eyes. “You’re acting like I could be at  _ all _ relatable to Theo,” He said. Liam had stopped calling him ‘Mr. Raeken’ in his head, deeming him unworthy of that kind of silent respect. Nolan paused buttering his toast.

“Wait, his name is _ Theo?” _ He asked. “That’s a rich white guy kind of name.”

Liam nodded enthusiastically. “He is, I looked him up!” He exclaimed, unlocking his phone to find the screenshot of an online magazine he’d taken. He ignored Nolan’s grumble of _ ‘of course you did’ _ and looked through his pictures until he found it. “Apparently he’s as rich as Mrs. Martin said he was. He’s not just  _ upper-middle class _ , he’s full out  _ wealthy _ . CEO and president of his own company and makes a seven-figure salary at the  _ least _ .”

He moved to show Nolan the headline that he’d scoffed at the night before. 

During his late-night search on Theo Raeken’s name, he’d learned a lot about him. He’d found out that Theo was so rich because he designed luxury vacation resorts, which was exactly the kind of unnecessary and upscale thing he would think a guy like Theo would do. Also on the list of unnecessary things a guy like Theo would do was the article itself, which seemed so fake-humble, and it was full of quotes that some millionaire would make about himself. The thing about the _sacrifices_ and _hard_ _work_ seemed like complete bullshit to Liam. He found it incredibly hard to believe that Theo had started his own company when he was twenty-three without anybody else doing most of it for him. When Liam was twenty-three, he was still getting blackout drunk every Friday night and was barely even getting paid for his job yet.

Liam assumed that Nolan was scanning the screenshot of the article like Liam had been doing on and off, but what he said wasn’t exactly about the content. “ _ That’s _ him?” Nolan asked, pointing at the picture. “A-and he’s thirty-five there? Does he  _ still _ look like that?” Liam nodded, raising an eyebrow. “Okay, I changed my mind about seducing him, holy  _ fuck _ .”

_ “No,” _ Liam groaned, trying to snatch his phone back, but Nolan held it in place, still ogling Theo Raeken. “He’s a  _ dick _ , Nolan, a complete dick! Did you see how he barely even mentioned his family?”

“You’re acting like I even  _ read _ the article when I could be looking at him. Jesus Liam, I’m sorry, but seriously, I’m straight and I would still take  _ every _ opportunity to climb that man like a tree.”

“He’s five-nine tops,” Liam argued. “And you teeter on the line of straight every time you see Alec at the bar.”

“And you’re five-eight, so you can’t even say that. You could make a sugar daddy out of him,” Nolan marveled, ignoring Liam’s comment about Alec.

Liam made a gagging noise. “That’s the parent of my  _ student _ , dipshit, and like I said, I  _ hate _ him. He yelled at me for almost nothing and now I have to go see him at his ‘home office’ and apologize for being a decent person,” Liam grumbled.

“Wait, didn’t that say that he designs resorts?” Nolan asked, gaping.  _ “‘Oh my God, Theo, take me to Italy!’ ‘Of course babe, we’ll hop in the private jet and I’ll take you wherever you want!’” _ Nolan said, dramatically imitating Liam and Theo. Once he got over his own laughter, he sighed elatedly to himself. “But really, wow. He is... _ hot _ .”

Liam, entirely unamused, stared at him. “You’re really selling the whole ‘I’m straight’ thing here, Nol,” He said dryly, prying his phone out of Nolan’s fingers and leaving. “I’m going to work, but by all means, keep putting the dick who might make me lose my job into your straight boy fantasies.”

“Will do!” Nolan called as Liam shut the door behind him. Going into work with a hopeful outlook was harder.

+++

Liam would admit that instead of practicing his apology, he was mostly just gathering more information about Theo Raeken. The guy seemed to be the only thing he could think about, as much as it sucked. It had been awhile since LIam encountered someone who made him so mad, so Theo was the only thing on his mind.

In the last two days, he’d been doing a lot of research on him, reading whatever he could find just to quell some need to entertain his fixations. Apparently, from what he’d seen and read, Theo had been pretty much nonstop designing resorts and suites for years. He had a few in Hawaii, Florida, and California, plus international ones in scenic Italy, Greece, Japan, and the Bahamas. Liam realized that his mother and stepfather had gone to the Bahamas resort for their honeymoon, and that made him irrationally mad. His family had supported Theo, who already had millions, and that pissed him off.

Theo didn’t live too far away from Liam, but he wasn’t really in Beacon Hills - Theo lived in what they called “Beacon Heights,” which was higher up both geographically and economically. Theo lived where the other rich people of the smaller town lived. 

Liam had used to be a kid who didn’t understand why people were so spiteful and angry at wealthy people, since he’d assumed that one of the best outcomes in life was to be as filthy rich as some people were. He always thought more money meant less problems, and that if rich people were rich, that was their business - anyone would kill to take their place if they had the opportunity. 

However, Liam wasn’t that kid anymore, and he definitely understood why people didn’t like rich people as he pulled into Theo’s long-ass driveway in his beaten-up car. He understood now that the spite towards rich people wasn’t just because they had money that other people wanted, it was because of the unnecessary things that rich people had. Liam knew for a fact that Jack drove a Mercedes to school every day and Theo seemed to have two of his own in the front, plus a huge, landscaped lawn that Theo clearly didn’t maintain himself. The difference between rich people and the people who  _ hated _ rich people was that  _ they _ would actually use their money for good things, not expensive cars or manicured lawns. Things like charity and healthy things.

It took him  _ way _ too long of a walk up a front path to get to Theo’s large oak door.

When he rang the doorbell and it opened up to a maid -  _ a fucking maid _ \- standing there with a smile, Liam thought bitterlyof his teachers’ salary. “You’re here to see Mr. Raeken?” She asked sweetly, and Liam nodded. “Right this way!”

He followed her through clean, high-ceiling hallways, catching glimpses of open floor planned rooms with equally expensive-looking furnishings. Theo’s house, or mansion, as it was more appropriate to call it, was as huge as Liam expected, but at least it wasn’t the cold, white abyss he’d been imagining. There were at least some signs of life there with dark colors, leather seats, and dark green accents. 

Once again, it took him all too long to get to Theo’s home office and study, feeling awkward as he walked on a floor that felt far too expensive for him. He wondered then if he was supposed to take his shoes off at the door, but then remembered he didn’t really care about hospitality. He was there only to fake an apology and then never see Theo again, and that was all.

There was still anger in the pit of his stomach by the time he and the maid reached Theo’s study. He squared his shoulders as the maid knocked on the door politely, trying to push down on all of the things he wanted to say when he stepped in, but they were pretty much knocked out of his mouth anyway when she opened the door.

Liam almost laughed when he saw Theo’s study. Honestly, he wasn’t sure why he expected anything different from Theo. He seemed like  _ exactly _ the type of guy to have the stereotypical academic rich study, full of dark bookshelves, a seating area with leather chairs, a large desk, and another big leather chair where Theo was sitting. The room itself smelled like wood, leather, and cologne of some type, which was exactly what it looked like it should smell like. It was even completed with one of those crystal liquor decanters sitting on an end table near the extravagant couches. It looked like something straight out of a movie.

“Mr. Dunbar is here to see you,” The maid said with a smile, making Liam wonder just how much she was being paid to be here.

“Thank you, Alice,” Theo said. Alice nodded and walked away, shutting the door behind her and leaving Liam and Theo alone in the study. 

Theo looked at him, analyzing him as he stood there, until he motioned to the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down,” He beckoned, sitting up straighter in his seat. 

Liam followed his instructions like Mrs. Martin had told him to do and sat down in the chair, which was annoyingly comfortable. It was annoying because he felt like sitting there shouldn’t be comfortable, since sitting on this side of someone’s desk made him feel like he was in the principal’s office. Being stared down by someone more powerful than him like that wasn’t something Liam missed from his earlier years. 

Theo tapped his fingers on his desk as Liam’s clenched and unclenched by his sides nervously. “I believe there’s something you’re here to say to me,” Theo said, a knowing look in his eye. 

Liam took a deep breath and nodded. He thought back to what Nolan had said back at the house about faking it when he shut his eyes, leveling his voice out to match what Nolan had suggested. Even if his advice sucked, he tended to be right. “Yes,” Liam agreed, looking Theo in his eyes, which looked darker from their surroundings. Theo raised an eyebrow at him expectantly.

Liam bit the inside of his mouth hard enough to sting to draw his focus away from his pride. “I’m sorry,” He started. “What I said about your son and his life was completely unprofessional and rude. It wasn’t my place to be concerned,” Liam said. His words weren’t exactly what he’d been planning to say, coming out in more of a jumble of his options. Either way, he hoped they worked. Theo was still staring him down. “My intention was never to intrude, but I see what I did wrong. I can only just hope that you don’t hold this against me or the school,” Liam said, the words sounding foreign in his mouth.

Theo seemed to consider this for a minute, looking away from him and nodding to himself as he looked at the surface of his shiny desk. “Hm,” He murmured in response, which Liam was more than happy to take as a win - that is, if he were happy about this at all. Something about the look on Theo’s face read disinterested and unimpressed, and Liam couldn’t stop himself from scowling at him, the anger under his skin starting to burn.

The thing about Liam and his teaching was that Liam always got along a lot better with the students than the adults. Students didn’t tend to ever feel some sort of superiority over each other or anyone else like teachers and parents did, and that's why Liam liked them better. Most students didn’t hold some air of arrogance and unwavering confidence because of their age like older people did, and Theo was a prime example of the type of person his students were the opposite of. He grit his teeth as Theo looked away entirely, seemingly reading one of the papers on his desk like Liam wasn’t even there.

“You know what? No,” Liam said before he could stop it, and Theo looked at him questioningly. He’d been thinking about this for far too long, and even though he knew in the moment that it was a mistake, he couldn’t hold it back any longer. Swallowing his pride and holding down his anger had never been Liam’s strong suit, so even though he held it all in when it came to his students, that wouldn’t cut it now that he was facing the same man that had tormented his thoughts for an entire week. “I lied. I’m not sorry,” He said. Theo raised an eyebrow at him, his lips parting in question, but Liam wouldn’t let him get anything out. “I’m sorry for the  _ way _ I said what I said, but I’m not sorry I said it, because it  _ is _ my place. It  _ is _ my place to want what’s best for my students, and that includes your son, no matter how much money is at risk of me saying something to you. Jack is an  _ amazing _ student when he wants to be, and I know better than anybody else that that kind of intelligence and talent doesn’t just go away for no reason. There’s something going on with him, and it is  _ absolutely _ my place to question it and question  _ you _ .” Liam felt fired up, like nothing was holding him back. His hands gripped at the armrests of the chair he was sitting in, reveling in the rapidly changing emotions on Theo’s face. “I don’t want him to go down a bad path just because you got offended because I implied you were a shitty father, which in all honesty, maybe you  _ are! _ I don’t know what goes on outside of my classroom, but I know that something’s wrong, and I’m really not sure where the  _ hell _ else it could have happened if it wasn’t in this house. So by all means, this is  _ my _ issue. Your money means nothing to me, so by all means, try and  _ fire _ me-”

_ “Liam,”  _ Theo interrupted firmly, and Liam was barely able to cut himself off. Theo blinked at him for a minute, trying to recover from all that had been thrown at him. He cleared his throat and sighed. “...You’re right.”

“ _ Okay- _ ” Liam started up again, the anger still in his voice until it suddenly died in his throat. “Wait, _ what?” _ He stammered.

Theo gave a weak, small smile. “I think you’re right,” He admitted, though it sounded like it pained him to say. It was Liam’s turn to be confused then, tilting his head to the side as he tried to understand what he was hearing. Theo took a deep breath. “You’re right. There are problems, and I know what they are,” He said. “I’m not around for him like I should be, and I’ve known that. I think I just got mad at you because I was just...I think I was hoping that everything would be solved on its own,” Theo said. 

_ That _ threw him for a loop. The fear of being fired hadn’t even begun to set in yet, so he’d gone from being angry and confrontational to incredibly confused in the span of a few seconds. He couldn’t get a grip on the feeling.

Theo sighed again. “...But I know now that things aren’t going to just go away with time, so I’m willing to try whatever you think could help him.”

It was hard to get past the overwhelming suspicion of this being a trap, so Liam looked at him and spoke cautiously. He wasn’t sure how much he could trust this guy and whatever sudden change of heart he’d just had within a week. Maybe Theo was baiting him. 

“Okay…” Liam said, deciding to trust; maybe Theo was good enough to be genuine about this. He looked a little too sincere to be acting.

Now he was lost; he’d been expecting to swallow his pride, apologize, and get out of here. Now, with the heat of anger dying down, he had no idea what to say to Theo. 

He tried to think of what could happen next. If they’d been civil about this, Liam would have already had a list ready to go, but of course he had to go into this unprepared. “...The only thing I can tell you right now is to start simple. If you don’t already, just...start conversations with him. Don’t wait for him to come to you about things. Ask him about how his day’s been when you can. Work it into a conversation,” Liam said carefully, trying to avoid anything that might set Theo off again. Theo nodded, taking everything in. “It lets him know that you care about his life and what’s going on in it. It makes a big difference.”

During the cooldown in which they talked, they kept their guards up. It wasn’t until Liam stepped out of Theo’s house and was halfway down the street in his car when the appropriate amount of panic began to set in and his eyes were blown wide as he drove. “What the  _ fuck _ did you just do,” He asked himself the entire way back to his own, much tinier house, feeling like he needed to wash a day’s worth of experience off of him. He’d just seen more money and more stress than he’d ever seen in his life in that house, and he was ready to fall into bed by the end of it.

+++

Liam’s habit of checking his emails before he went to bed stayed true that night. He checked them on his phone as he brushed his teeth. One of them stood out in particular among the basic news that the administrators and vice principals sent out every night.

_ TO:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _   
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ FROM:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.org _ _   
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.org) _ SUBJECT: Thank you _ _   
_ _ Liam, _ _   
_ _ Thank you for tonight. I’ll keep what you said in mind this time. _ _   
_ _ Theo _

Mason, who was brushing his teeth next to him, looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow at him.

“He’s still a dick,” Liam said, believing it wholeheartedly. “Now he’s just a dick I have to talk to more often.”

  
Liam was  _ so _ excited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> I got a lot of comments on my last chapter talking about Liam's tendency to let things happen to him, but that's all just part of his development in the beginning :) Don't you guys worry, he's getting better at controlling things that happen to him as time goes on. He's faced a scary thing already, right?
> 
> I also thought you guys should know that where the picture is inserted, I wrote out in bold: [IMAGE ATTACHED HERE EMMA DON'T FUCKING FORGET TO ATTACH IT] and I DIDN'T FORGET!! That's new! 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this chapter :) I have chapter three planned out and it's a fun one, but I have yet to start writing it. It'll be out soon enough :))
> 
> Comments are always appreciated! Let me know what you think of this one and what'll happen next!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	3. Free Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam celebrates his twenty-sixth birthday. There's an unexpected guest and an even more unexpected conversation that follows.

Two weeks later, Liam’s classroom was alight with the calm and excited talking of a Friday morning. Every Friday, Liam would play some soft music from his computer to set the tone for a good day, and his students always seemed to enjoy it. The end of class on Fridays was usually a pretty nice vibe, especially for Liam now that most of the stress with Theo had gone away. He hadn’t seen or talked to him that much since the time he went over to give his failed apology, which he had been surprised but not unhappy about. 

He was sitting and discreetly checking his texts under his desk while his students chatted with each other idly. Mason, Nolan, Corey, and Alec, the bartender from the bar they frequented when they had spare time, had put him in a group chat about tonight’s plans. Liam was looking forward to them already.

From what he could hear of the conversations around him, most of the kids were talking about what they were doing over the weekend. All he knew was that they certainly seemed to do a lot more than what Liam got up to when he was their age. He had spent most of his time at home.

“What are  _ you _ doing this weekend, Mr. Dunbar?” Cassandra, a girl with light brown skin and curly hair asked. Cass always liked to talk to Liam and participated a lot in class, so it wasn’t all unexpected that she brought Liam into the conversation she was having with a few of her friends.

Liam smiled. “I’m actually going out tonight to celebrate my birthday,” He said honestly, watching a few students’ heads turn to look at him, including Jack. Cass grinned excitedly.

“It’s your birthday? Why didn’t you  _ tell _ us?” One of her friends asked.

Liam laughed. “Usually I don’t go advertising my age to my students,” He said, knowing what question inevitably came next.

“How old  _ are _ you, then?” Cass said, looking at him curiously.

Liam didn’t usually like to tell people at the school his age, since he was still visibly young and didn’t need a number put to the baby face, but he knew he wasn’t getting out of it. He’d gotten the attention of pretty much his entire class. From their rapt attention, Liam could tell this was a question that they all had and had been waiting for an answer to. Even Jack was looking at him, although a little more skeptically than the others. 

Liam sighed dramatically, deciding that since he was feeling a little more lighthearted that day than usually, he’d indulge them. “ _ Fiiine _ ,” He sighed, making a few laugh. “...I’m twenty-six.”

Cass’s mouth dropped open. “You’re  _ twenty-six _ ?” She scoffed, looking at her friends. “ _ Twenty-six _ ? Meaning ten years older than us?  _ Twenty-six _ ?” At this, Jack raised an eyebrow at him, obviously thinking to himself. 

“Shouldn’t you still be in college?” Jack scoffed a second later. Cass, who had been unfortunate enough to be assigned the seat next to Jack’s for the semester, whirled around and glared at him. 

“College is only until you’re twenty- _ two _ , idiot,” She shot, and Jack smirked at her. She shook her head and turned back to Liam sweetly. “Anyway,  _ really?” _

“Yes,  _ twenty-six _ ,” Liam sighed, used to how short Cass was with Jack, mostly just amused by the way everyone reacted. “How old did you guys  _ think _ I was?” He asked.

“I don’t know, we just thought you were probably in your thirties with a young face,” One of them said, making Liam laugh. “We didn’t know you were  _ twenty-six _ !” 

“And to think I was twenty- _ five _ yesterday,” Liam mused as the bell rang, cutting off the conversation. He stood up from his desk chair and smiled at everyone as they started filtering out. “Have a nice weekend, everybody! Remember, no homework, but a quiz review on Monday!” He called out, hoping they’d hear it. Somebody tossed a pencil onto his desk with a joking murmur of  _ “happy birthday,” _ then they were all gone.

Liam sat back in his chair, ready for his lunch break, but he still had some work to do before he headed down to the teachers’ lounge. His desk was always a mess by the end of each period, birthday pencils included or not, and it could be likened to a landfill if he waited to clean it up until after his last class. 

He straightened up his pencil cup, adding the new one, and made sure that nothing was too close to the edge of the desk. Next, he closed out of all his extra tabs on his desktop, then reached for the plastic bin where students turned in their assignments to put the papers in a neat pile before he graded them, which would probably be on Sunday, since he was planning on nursing a hangover on Saturday. 

Before he could straighten them out on the surface of his desk, he caught a glimpse of almost unfamiliar handwriting in the corner of a page. He looked at it with interest, thumbing it out of the pile and putting it apart from the others. He was surprised to see the name scrawled at the top:  _ Jack Raeken. _

When he looked it over, he found that it wasn’t just a random paper, it was the homework assignment from the night before. He’d passed the sheet of multiple choice questions to him without expecting him to actually do it, but he must have snuck it into the bin when he walked out of the classroom with the crowd. 

There were the lyrics of a song written in the margins of the paper -  _ Disorder _ by Joy Division - but other than that and some other random doodles here and there, Jack had done it with almost every question correct. The only one he got wrong was one that Liam realized had been worded wrong, so he was able to put a big 100 and a smiley face written in red pen on the front of his paper.

Liam grinned to himself. Maybe what Jack had done was the bare minimum and his behavior hadn’t changed much, but clearly  _ something _ had. As well as grading his physical paper, Liam put the grade into the online gradebook right away, satisfied at being able to put something other than a zero in for him. As little as it was, it was a nice indirect birthday present.

+++

When he got back to the house, he changed out of his everyday button-down and tie into something more comfortable to head to the bar in. He picked out a red long-sleeved shirt that accentuated his muscles nicely without looking too douchey about it and took the opportunity to wear jeans, which he never got to do, let alone his black ones. He looked in the mirror on the back of his door and smiled at himself. Even though he hadn’t had a lot of time to work out since winter break let up, he still looked good.

He ran his fingers through his hair to tousle it a little, once again finding that he missed when he’d grown it out in college. For awhile he’d kept it long, so by the time he graduated it was down to around his shoulders. He’d had to cut it when it came time for job interviews, since schools weren’t too keen on hiring young guys with unruly hair to teach their impressionable teenagers (as if a few inches of hair was going to cause them to do crimes or something). Admittedly, it had been getting kind of  _ ridiculously _ long and shorter hair suited him somewhat better, but he missed being able to style it. 

While he was looking in the mirror, his door swung open and Nolan stood there to catch Liam checking himself out. Nolan looked at him with a mix of bewilderment and amusement, but for once in his life he decided not to say anything. “So, do you think you want to get food  _ before _ we go, or…?”

Liam shook his head. “I figure you and your crush on Alec will get us enough food from the bar and then we’ll come back and drunkenly order too much pizza if you haven’t already been taken into the back rooms,” Liam said cheekily, not joking about any of it. Nolan rolled his eyes and ignored him, but there was a light pink blush on his cheeks.

“Sounds like a plan,” He said, starting to walk out, but he paused. “Wait. About the  _ pizza _ , not the other thing,” He corrected, shaking his head. Liam snickered and shut the door, starting to debate about the right shoes to wear with his outfit. Usually he wore dress shoes at work or slippers at home, so he didn’t get much practice on making up outfits anymore for being out in public. 

A couple hours of debating and a sundown later, Liam had chosen his shoes and everyone was on their way to The Pelican, the bar that they’d been going to since they moved in nearby. The brick building between a barber shop and (quite regrettably) a tattoo parlor was home to so many memories, including the first game of drunk pool Liam ever won, Nolan’s first experiences with vodka, and many birthday celebrations between the four of them over the years. They were friends with some of the regulars, plus Alec, who had gotten used to them after they wore him down. The Pelican was their go-to spot to party or chill out.

As always, the place was mostly empty save for a few regulars when Liam and the others walked in, and Alec grinned at him as he poured someone a bourbon. “Right on time to start a bender,” He commented as the four of them came up to their normal spots at the bar. “Nine PM. Classy as always, boys.”

“Yeah, you know they’re known around here for their  _ class _ ,” Rod, the older regular who was enjoying his bourbon, joked. Mason shot him finger guns as Alec poured them all tequila shots without being asked. Nolan took his before the other three had been poured, making Alec roll his eyes and pour him another one right away. 

“Happy birthday, Liam,” Alec said, watching as Liam winced from the burn that was sent down his throat. Liam squeezed his eyes shut tightly and shook his head, already feeling the shot hit his stomach. 

“ _ Ah _ , thank you,” He said through the burn, grinning widely. “I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”

“So that he can wake up tomorrow morning and claim he’s never drinking again,” Corey added.

As he had more drinks, they moved into one of the booths towards the wall of the bar. They all sat around the round table as they threw back shots and ate some of the food Alec gave them. “These are for Liam’s birthday  _ only _ ,” He said every time he set down a new order of something, acting like he wasn’t  _ always _ giving them free food whenever they came in. 

Alec even sat down with them after Nolan basically forced him to, tugging his wrist so that he had no other choice but to fall into the red booth. He laughed and blushed, balancing the bottle of tequila he’d come over with in one hand while he caught his balance with the other one. They all cheered loudly as things got blearier, never minding Alec’s exasperated co-workers and the irritated guy who looked like he’d come into the bar to nurse a drink and angst. None of them were sober enough to care except for Corey, the designated driver, but as he put it, “It’s not our fault he happens to be sad on Liam’s birthday.”

Things got hazier the more Liam drank, and they uncoincidentally got more fun. Everything was just so much funnier and entertaining to Liam when he was drunk, and from what he’d heard, Liam was too. Everyone loved being around Liam when he drank, because he was always spouting off about one thing or another. He vaguely wondered what he’d do that night before he got a lot dizzier with another shot, and then he was just thinking more about jalapeno poppers. 

At one point they were all sitting around the table, none of them drinking anymore since they were only a few hours into the night and didn’t want to go too far just yet, talking about anything and everything with slurred words. “D’you guys remember Brett?” Nolan asked, and the others all either laughed or groaned. Liam threw his head back so hard it bounced on the padded back of the booth.

“Oh my God, I almost forgot about Brett!” Alec laughed. “The- the tall one! What was he, a model?”

Liam nodded sagely one too many times, his fuzzy brain thinking it was fun to keep his head bouncing. “Yeeeah,” He sighed. “He was cool.”

“No he fuckin’  _ wasn’t _ ,” Mason scoffed, pushing Liam’s head with the heel of his hand. “He was so  _ scummy _ . He didn’t even own sheets,” Mason reminded him. Liam nodded again, grinning. 

“Sometimes we slept on the couch because he’d spill things on the mattress,” Liam remembered, sounding way too fond for what it was. “Fun times.”

“He was  _ disgusting _ ,” Mason said, and Liam agreed with that too. Mason rarely liked any of Liam’s exes, but Brett had to be his least favorite. Liam had definitely had questionable taste in the women and men (mostly men) he dated, and his friends never let him hear the end of it. Liam’s exes were a big topic of conversation between their group, especially once they were too out of it to pretend to be nice about it anymore. “What about Ross? He literally stole things from our house. We’re still missing like, half of our spoons.”

Liam really didn’t have much of an argument for that one, either. “And cheers to that,” He said, taking it upon himself to pour another shot that ended up spilling over the edge of the glass. 

The conversation about Liam’s exes didn’t last too long anyway, and not only because it was getting harder and harder to keep their wits together. It seemed like every other second, a new thing was happening, and Liam was content to take all of it in at once. He was forced to forget about the stresses of his week as things made less sense and became more about the party of five they had going on.

The rest of the bar was still empty by the time Alec stumbled over to the old jukebox a few feet away, pounding on it to get it to work after it ate his coins. When he finally got the music going, Liam whooped at the song choice.

“ _ Hell _ yeah!” Mason cheered as Liam stood up. Nolan and Alec both laughed as Liam almost fell on his ass trying to climb up onto the table while Corey watched slightly apprehensively, but nobody tried to stop him.

The table was unsteady under Liam’s feet, but that didn’t stop the crowning sense of achievement he got from getting up on it. He felt on top of the world even though he was only a few feet up, and Liam drunkenly wondered why he’d never done this before in all his nighs spent at The Pelican.

The dance he did looked ridiculous in hindsight; he put his arms up and tried to sway his hips in what was more of an off-rhythm wiggle, but he didn’t have a care in the world. As far as he was concerned, he looked awesome. The cheers of his friends and the other random bar goers couldn’t mean anything but admiration, and Liam was eating it up.

He got dizzier the more he moved, but he managed to keep his balance for longer than he probably should’ve been able to. It was closing his eyes that was his mistake; his head swam and he didn’t even have time to open his eyes again before he felt himself falling off the table - and into someone’s arms.

Liam assumed it was Alec catching him, but when he opened his eyes, he just about jumped out of his skin. He rolled out of Theo Raeken’s arms onto the carpeted floor of the bar, his drunken high doing nothing but making the entire situation feel a whole lot worse. “Holy-!” He exclaimed as he looked up at Theo.

Theo looked at him amusedly on the floor, offering a hand to pull himself back up on, but Liam used the table instead and slid back into the booth with his face burning red.

Nolan, the only one who had seen Theo before, was laughing up a storm compared to everyone else, so much so that Liam wanted to hide as Theo looked at them all. “Guys, this is _ Mr. Raeken!” _ Liam said as naturally and smoothly as he could.  _ Now _ everyone else was catching on. Mason choked. 

“Oh,  _ SHIT!” _ He shouted, his eyes widening as he tried to hold back his laughter. “Oh,  _ damn _ , Liam, you really-!” 

_ “Shut the fuck up,”  _ Liam hissed.

For the first time that Liam had ever seen, Theo grinned. He just kind of wished that it wouldn’t have been because he was laughing at him. “Theo,” Theo introduced himself simply, clearly still sober. He must have walked into the bar just recently enough to be able to head over to Liam’s table and be the victim to an ambush. 

Through his laughter, Nolan managed to be as unhelpful as always. “It’s Liam’s birthday,” He announced matter-of-factly, slinging his arms around Liam and Alec’s necks. Liam shushed him, but Nolan wasn’t stopping his reign of terror that night for anything. “He’s  _ twenty-six _ tonight!”

Theo glanced at him, still looking very entertained. Liam shut his eyes and sighed.

_ “Quiiiiittt,” _ He whined at Nolan, swatting at him tiredly. Nolan snickered. Trying to be serious again, Liam opened his eyes and made the best eye contact with Theo as he could, despite everything seeming kind of blurry. “Mr. Raeken, I am  _ so _ sorry for falling on you,” He started. 

“But are you  _ really?” _ Nolan scoffed, looking Theo up and down. “If I may Theo, you are fuckin’  _ BUILT!” _ Liam didn’t even get to see Theo’s reaction to that since he slammed his head down on the table and whined. “Sit down, join us for a few drinks!”

_ “No,” _ Liam groaned, everything starting to hurt, and not just because of how hard he’d just hit himself.

Luckily, Theo shook his head, not even trying to hide his tiny smile. “I don’t want to intrude on Liam’s birthday,” He declined, looking at all of them. “I’ll see you around, Liam.”

Liam gave a weak wave with his head still on the table as Theo walked off, and his friends dissolved into laughter. Liam spent most of the rest of his night trying to drink away the embarrassment, hoping in the morning this would all be a dream and the mortification wouldn’t stick around.

+++

It stuck around.

After a round in the bathroom of trying not to throw up, forcing down a few headache pills, and struggling to brush his teeth, Liam stumbled into the kitchen wearing a bathrobe with his eyes squinted against the sunlight. He felt like death warmed over, and the memories from the night before creeping back up on him weren’t helping. He collapsed into a chair by the kitchen table next to Mason who was, as always, infuriatingly recovered. Liam didn’t understand why Mason was blessed with a body that liked him and Liam wasn’t. 

“I’m never drinking again,” He groaned, knowing he was playing right into the joke, but he was too tired to care. It was less about his raging hangover this time and more about what he’d done back at the bar. “You saw that too, right? That thing I did?”

Mason hid a smile with the rim of his coffee cup, but it showed in his eyes anyway. “When you fell into the arms of the super hot, super rich guy that you hate?” Mason asked. “Yeah, I saw that. Why didn’t you ever tell me he was that hot, by the way? I feel like that’s prime information.”

“It wasn’t really my biggest priority,” Liam said, stealing Mason’s coffee cup and taking a drink from it. It was too warm in his mouth and made his head pound even more as he held back a gag of disgust. “And  _ oh my God… _ ” He groaned, putting his arms on the table and slumping over to rest his head in them like a nest. “What am I even supposed to do now? I think I just have to quit my job. There’s no coming back from this. Sorry, Mason, I’ll pay my share of this month’s rent, but then I’m out of here.”

“What are you so stressed about?” Mason scoffed, taking his coffee back and sipping it. Liam picked his head up and looked at Mason incredulously.

“What the fuck do you mean _ ‘what am I stressed about?’” _ Liam asked, making his voice sound extra dumb to imitate Mason. “The same guy that yelled at me and already thinks he’s superior to me walked into the bar last night and I  _ fell _ on him. I don’t see how that isn’t fucking  _ humiliating _ , Mase,” Liam said.

Mason shrugged. “I don’t know, he didn’t seem too upset,” Mason said. Liam shook his head. “I’m serious, I was way less drunk than you when it happened, and he didn’t seem to mind all that much.”

“He was  _ laughing _ at me,” Liam said dejectedly.

“It was  _ funny!” _ Mason reminded him. “ _ Everyone _ was laughing at you.”

“Yeah, but the other people who were laughing at me have all probably done dumb things before. Theo already looks at me like I’m so much younger than I am, like I’m some stupid kid who can’t do anything right. I don’t need that to be my reputation,” Liam explained as clearly as he could, his headache starting to lighten a little. Mason smirked at him. “I don’t think I could have done anything  _ worse _ than what I did.”

“You could’ve thrown up on him,” Mason said. “That would’ve been worse.” Liam groaned, not feeling any less embarrassed at the thought. “Really, I don’t think it was as bad as it seemed. He was laughing at you because you fell off a table, and that’s funny. Not because you’re childish. If he really hated you that much he would’ve just let you fall.”

Liam scowled at him. “He kind of did,” He said, remembering it wrong. Mason laughed.

“Uh, no. You rolled right onto the floor, but that wasn’t his fault. He didn’t mean to drop you,” Mason said, picking his phone up off the table. “Alec actually got a video of it, watch.” Mason held the phone between them.

Liam cringed as he watched himself dance wildly offbeat for a few seconds, but he could barely look when he saw his feet getting too close to the edge of the table. Theo stepped into the shot just in time and his arms went out to catch him. Liam’s eyes stayed unfocused for a second as he shook his head and tried to remember which way was up, which was what he’d remembered feeling. Mason was right, though; Theo looked surprised when he caught him, but even more surprised when Liam jerked out of his hold.

“See, he held onto you for a solid three seconds there,” Mason said, pointing towards the paused screen like Liam didn’t already have to see it in all its horror. “If I didn’t think you were going to punch me in the head, I’d say I think Theo likes you a little bit.”

“What?  _ No!” _ Liam argued, suddenly alarmed.

“He held onto you for that long, he even rushed to get you so you wouldn’t fall!”

“Okay, so he was trying not to see a  _ death _ yesterday night, so what? And he was trying not to laugh, look at him,” He said, going back about ten seconds in the video and pausing it on Theo’s face. 

Mason groaned, pulling his phone away from him. “You’re relentless,” He sighed. “You never want to see anything the good way when it comes to people like him. You just don’t like him because he’s rich.”

Liam barked out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s  _ exactly _ why I don’t like him! We are the ninety-nine percent, Mason! We don’t have yachts and companies and mansions! Theo is smug, arrogant-”

“ _ Stable,” _ Mason interjected. “ _ Responsible, organized, motivated _ ...I could keep going.” Liam rolled his eyes, but Mason leveled him with a knowing look. “...I think you’re  _ scared _ .”

“What the hell do I have to be  _ scared _ of?” Liam scoffed. “I’m not scared of him.”

Mason nodded but kept going. “You know what else we talked about last night while you were half-gone? We talked about how shitty your exes are while we all spilled shots of cheap tequila. We talked about how chaotic the people around you are all the time, myself, Alec, Nolan, and Corey included, and that was normal for you,” Mason said. “I think you want to hate Theo so bad because he has his shit together and you don’t believe anyone like that would ever respect you at all.”

Liam was speechless for a second. He rubbed his hand over his face. “You take  _ one _ fucking psychology course four years ago and you think you’re an expert, huh?”

Mason laughed. “Not an expert in psychology, but an expert in you. I’ve known you since we were kids, and you were always the one taking care of everything all the time. You just get intimidated by other people doing the same.”

Liam glared at him. “You know, I  _ like _ my life,” Liam argued. “Sometimes I come home and fall asleep at seven PM, but I  _ like _ my life, and I  _ like _ the chaotic people around me. I’m not in some big rush to change myself and who I’m around.”

“And I never said you had to do that,” Mason said gently. “But I think you’d get along with Theo a lot more if you opened yourself up to being friends with him. You don’t have to go  _ golfing _ with the guy or anything, but you could try to look past that he’s rich. I think it’ll be a lot easier on you if you just let go a little.”

Liam was unconvinced, but he didn’t have an answer for any of that. He hated when Mason got him like this, sitting silently. He was one of the only people who could. “...I’m tired, I’m going back to bed,” Liam mumbled, pushing up off the table and heading back towards his room. This time, Mason let him off.

  
_ Friends with Theo? _ Liam thought to himself with a self-deprecating laugh. _ In what world? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you sm for reading the third chapter!!
> 
> That conversation was a little heavy :/ especially to throw at somebody who's still hungover. I don't think I'd appreciate that either, tbh.  
> Once again, this hasn't been a very theo-heavy chapter, but bear with me here. He's coming soon enough! There'll definitely be more of him next chapter for you guys and Liam to enjoy :)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this one! I know I really enjoyed the visual of Theo catching Liam falling off the table, lol.   
> Let me know what you think!!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	4. Chicken Soup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam catches a cold and runs into Theo in his pursuit of cough syrup.

Liam felt a slight twinge in the back of his throat as he sat at his desk on Wednesday morning, but he wasn’t really surprised. One of his front row students seemed to be carrying some new bug around with him every other day, so it was only a matter of time before Liam caught one of his ever-present colds. He cleared his throat behind his hand and shook it off, figuring he’d sleep it off that night.

The classroom was mostly quiet that day since his students had all gotten done taking their quizzes and were getting started on a classwork assignment. Liam always let them talk with each other while they worked as long as it didn’t get too loud, so he busied himself with putting new grades in as his students worked away the last half hour of the period. He started grading the quizzes right away so he wouldn’t have to do too much that night, since the urge to sneeze was telling him he wasn’t going to feel like it.

He got through around half of the quizzes in a few minutes before he reached Jack’s. Besides that one assignment from Friday, he hadn’t turned in anything new, and for this quiz he’d circled only C’s and had the whole thing done in around thirty seconds. Liam bit back a sigh as he marked what he could, then put in a fifteen percent in the gradebook. 

Liam glanced up from the papers on his desk to look at him. His paper was sitting in front of him, untouched as usual, but Liam’s attention was drawn away from that.

He was smiling, different from his usual ‘resting bitch face’ or smug smirk, and at  _ Cass _ , no less. Liam couldn’t tell what they were saying as they spoke softly to each other, but whatever Jack said made her grin right back, which was even more surprising. This was the same Cass who was constantly snapping at Jack whenever he said anything, but now they were getting along and laughing quietly with each other. Jack even scratched the back of his head bashfully.

Liam shook his head to himself. Teenage relationships were weird. 

The bell rang a little while later and his students got up from their seats, slinging their bags over their shoulders and holding their papers in their hands. Some of them walked out without turning it in, since he’d given them the option to do it for homework, and others came and put it in the bin in front of Liam. It was all familiar faces turning in their assignments early like Cass at first. 

Liam usually tried not to look closely at who was turning things in so that they wouldn’t be embarrassed for any reason about their work, but he caught sight of a familiar middle finger with a silver ring on it. He looked up at Jack, who was slipping his paper into the bin as quickly as he could, and couldn’t help but smile at him encouragingly. 

Jack looked disinterested and walked away without even a nod, but Liam didn’t mind. He was just happy that he’d completed something, especially after it had looked like he wasn’t going to. It was even an opinion piece assignment, and Jack was always great at those. He actually looked forward to reading it.

Cass was waiting for Jack by the door and she bumped him with her shoulder as they started to walk to lunch together, leaving Liam to think again about how odd teenage relationships were, but a cough cut his train of thought off.  _ Jesus _ . He was going to have to buy hand sanitizer  _ just _ to keep on Daniel’s desk if he was going to keep getting sick from him.

+++

As much as Liam wanted to go home and fall into bed after work, he hopped in his car and drove down to the local Walgreens pharmacy instead. He’d thought he’d go through the rest of the day and take a nap when he went home, but the more he moved around and tired himself out, the more he had to accept that he was definitely getting sick. He suspected that by tomorrow he’d be a lot worse, so he knew he should get cold medication while he still felt well enough to. Besides, he had a few other things to pick up as well.

He grabbed one of the baskets at the front of the store and looked around at the pharmacy, trying to think about how he could get his things as efficiently as possible so he could go home and plant his face in his pillow. He started with picking up a new bottle of his shampoo that he was running out of, then a different one for Corey. Next he grabbed the multivitamins that Nolan swore by (but that Liam didn’t believe did anything) and added a bag of assorted candies into his basket just because. He briefly debated grabbing a box of condoms, but thought against it considering he always seemed to run into one of his co-workers here if he came right after school.

Towards the prescription counter was where most of the necessities were, so Liam headed back there last to find cough syrup. He refrained from just knocking the bottle into his basket and picked it up like a normal person, then went to the next aisle in search of a new bottle of Advil.

He found the Advil and was ready to go, but he also found none other than Theo walking from the other end of the aisle. Okay, so maybe hadn’t run into one of his co-workers per say, but he was still grateful he’d decided against the condoms. 

_ Or are you? _ A voice that sounded suspiciously like Mason, who hadn’t quit bothering him about his so-called friendship with Theo, said. Liam rolled his eyes at the thought and turned to Theo, who was looking down at his phone and walking.

Liam wasn’t sure what made him do it since his energy was already kind of zapped, but he did the same stupid thing he’d been doing to get himself into trouble lately: opened his mouth. “I thought this place would be above you,” Liam commented, acting like making fun of Theo was going to get him anywhere.

Theo looked up at him in surprise. He was wearing normal clothes for once, no suit and tie, with black glasses on instead of the contacts he apparently wore. His face was even relaxed before Liam had said anything. Liam was weirdly smug at catching him off-guard like this. 

It didn’t take long for Theo to get in gear. He rolled his green eyes at Liam as he slipped his phone into his pocket, transitioning right into the arrogant expression Liam knew. “Above  _ what _ , a  _ Walgreens?” _ Theo scoffed, raising an eyebrow at him. “Rich people don’t go to special stores.”

That was the first time he’d ever heard Theo admit he was rich, and for whatever reason it made him even more inclined to bother him. “Oh, you guys don’t have a Gucci pharmacy or something?” Liam mocked, smirking. It was just so fun to screw around with Theo like this. He felt like he should, just out of principal. Theo shook his head, seemingly playing along. “Really? Damn, I always thought that you guys all got your vitamins on whatever extravagant vacations you take. _ Limited edition _ vitamins, of course.”

Theo rolled his eyes. “I can’t say that any of the extravagant vacations that I  _ design _ have any limited edition vitamins, no,” Theo snarked. He glanced down, his eyes falling on the ones in Liam’s basket. “I see that the dinosaur gummies work just well enough for a grown man like you, anyway,” Theo said, reaching to pick them up out of his basket. He pretended to examine the jar scrutinizingly.

“I’d put that down if I were you. I have a cold and I  _ will _ cough on you,” Liam threatened. Theo raised his eyebrows and put his hands up in surrender in the same type of dramatic display that his son would have done. Liam used a lot of willpower trying not to roll his eyes. “And they’re for my roommate, anyway. I don’t think vitamins actually do anything.”

Theo put the vitamins back in the basket. “Clearly,” He said, looking Liam up and down, his eyes pausing on his red nose. “Maybe I  _ should _ make limited edition vitamins. Imagine the money I’d make.”

That time, Liam did roll his eyes, but he didn’t shoot back with  _ “yeah, from your market of other stupid rich people” _ like he wanted to. Theo raised an eyebrow at him and smirked, clearly thinking he had won the argument. 

Theo started walking away, and Liam would have let him if something didn’t fall out of his back pocket, a white prescription bag from the counter. As soon as he heard it fall, Theo whirled around to snatch it off the ground. He looked up at Liam sharply, probably trying to see if Liam had been able to see what the prescription was for. Liam hoped he could hide it well enough. 

Liam had taken Lexapro for his anxiety and depression when he was in college, but he would have never expected Theo to be taking it. He bit down on his tongue to avoid saying anything stupid, since his head was certainly thinking of a lot of things he couldn’t say. He didn’t think telling Theo that this made him seem more human would go over well at  _ all _ .

Theo must have been satisfied enough with whatever was on his face, since he slipped his prescription back into his pocket and straightened himself out. “Happy belated birthday by the way,” He said with an amused grin. If Liam wasn’t able to say anything before, the wave of embarrassment that came over him when Theo said that stopped his thoughts entirely. He heard Theo snickering to himself as he left the aisle. _Damn it._ _Liam had been hoping he’d forgotten about that._

+++

Liam did end up going home and taking a nap, but that meant he was awake well past when he should have gone to bed. He ate dinner with Nolan, Mason, and Corey, but when the other three went to bed, he wasn’t tired enough to sleep. Instead, he sat in front of the TV in their dark living room and pulled out the file of papers he’d brought home that day full of that day’s classwork.

Normally Liam wouldn’t do this, but he had been looking forward to reading a specific paper since it had been turned into him, so he found Jack’s and pulled it out first. Liam had prompted his students to summarize and give an opinion on a current event or issue, and Jack had always been good at those. He had strong opinions on a lot of things from what Liam could see, and strong opinions were always more fun to read and grade than wishy-washy neutral ones. 

Jack had written about backlash towards a new zoo exhibit, the debate on whether or not schools should censor the slurs in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and the conspiracies of older generations about modern electronics, but Liam knew this one was going to be interesting when he read what issue Jack had chosen. Jack’s messy handwriting read “Social Privilege vs. Censorship,” and Liam was ready to dive in to see what Jack would say about  _ that _ . 

As Liam read his assignment over, he couldn’t help but be surprised and impressed. Jack wrote about other people respectfully and open-mindedly, which was admittedly something that he hadn’t expected out of him. He even referenced and recognized his own privilege when it came to his life.  _ “I, of course, can’t even begin to understand the struggles that other people face in their day to day life, as I am what some would consider the poster boy for wealthy white male privilege. I have never faced a day in my life where I’ve been discriminated against or turned away from anything because of my gender identity, race, or economic status. My point of view has never been invalidated by anyone based on these facts either, so I will never truly know how it feels to be silenced.” _

Liam didn’t exactly blame himself for being so surprised that the disrespectful rich kid was this socially educated, and the surprise was pleasant. Maybe Theo was doing something right with Jack.

He wrote a note in the corner of Jack’s page next to the 100 mark -  _ “You have some great points on this and I completely agree with you. Keep up the good work.” _

_ +++ _

Liam woke up the next morning sick as a dog with a scratchy throat and runny nose, but he pushed himself out of bed anyway. He had lessons to teach and papers to pass back, and he was especially excited about giving Jack’s back. 

Instead of staying home like a normal person, Liam took the dose of cough syrup (he didn’t swig it like Nolan, the imbecile who made them run out of it in the first place) and popped a few Advils to clear his sinuses and headache. He dressed like he normally did with a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up and a blue tie, making the morning as normal as possible when he walked out. He was determined to make this a good day even if his body wasn’t completely in agreement. 

Daniel had the decency to look a little guilty when he came in to find Liam sneezing and sniffling, and Cass gave him sympathetic looks whenever he coughed as they did their first assignment of the class period.

When it got to be time to pass assignments back, Cass offered to help him. Liam let her take half of the papers but made sure that he had the half with Jack’s in it, since he wanted to hand it back himself. 

He got to Jack’s desk and slid the paper in front of him silently, but he didn’t miss the way that Jack’s eyes fell on it and then did a double take at the grade. Jack probably hadn’t been checking his grades online a lot recently, so he wouldn’t know that he’d been scoring high A’s on the past few assignments he’d been doing. He was clearly surprised when he looked at it, looking like he couldn’t quite believe that he’d done that well. He read over Liam’s note in the top multiple times before he put it in his bag, finally satisfied.

Liam wanted to tell him to be more confident in himself, but he went back to his desk instead.

+++

_ TO:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.net _ _   
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ FROM:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _   
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ SUBJECT: Jack’s Grades _ _   
_ _ Theo, _ _   
_ _ I just wanted to let you know how well Jack has been doing recently. Just yesterday he turned in an assignment that he got a 100 on, which isn’t unusual for him when he turns in work, but I was very impressed by his work. He has great, strong opinions on things and I appreciate that from him. I would definitely say something to him about it. Don’t make a big deal out of it or anything, but you could say that you checked his grades and saw it. Either way, I’d let him know he did well.  _

_ Liam Dunbar _ _   
_ _ History Teacher _ _   
_ _ Beacon Hills High School _

+++

_ TO:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _   
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ FROM:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.net _ _   
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ SUBJET: Re: Jack’s Grades _ _   
_ _ I did actually check Jack’s grades before your email, and I was very impressed. I encouraged him to do the next opinion piece that he was given, so I’m glad that he did it. He used to talk about the most random things all the time, so I know how great he is with speaking his mind and being opinionated. You might say he got that from me.  _ _   
_ _ Jack told me today that you were under the weather today. I hope you are feeling better and will take the weekend to yourself. I should’ve taken your threat to cough on me more seriously in the Walgreens yesterday.  _ _   
_ _ I was thinking that instead of emailing, we could meet to talk in person whenever you’re free to discuss Jack’s progress. Emailing isn’t exactly the best way to communicate everything after all, so we could meet every two weeks at my home office like we did before if you’re interested. Jack is normally away at his mother’s house for Fridays and weekends, so we could meet so he wouldn’t know about it. That’s only if that works with you, of course. _ _   
_ _ Feel better. I recommend the chicken soup from Century Diner, if you haven’t already tried it. _ _   
_ _ Theo Raeken _

+++

Maybe it was the joke about Walgreens or the subtle dig at Theo’s own personality, but Liam found that he was smiling to himself as he typed out his response.

_ TO:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.net _ _   
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ FROM:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _   
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ SUBJECT: Re: Jack’s Grades _ _   
_ _ I’d like that. Fridays generally work with me, so we could start a week from now, if that works with you. I can come after work or later if that works better for you.  _ _   
_ _ I appreciate your recommendation. Though, Century Diner is sort of a…’normal-person’ place for you, isn’t it? Maybe it’s like the Walgreens, huh? I’ll check it out, but in return, you should try the ham and brie panini from there.  _

_ Liam Dunbar _ _   
_ _ History Teacher _ _   
_ __ Beacon Hills High School

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!
> 
> This chapter was definitely a little shorter than the others, but there was some substantial Theo in there, so I think he makes up for it.  
> As you can see, I've recently finished the full outline for this fic and everything totaled up to be around fourteen chapters, so that's the number I'm working with so far :) That's subject to change, but for now that's the estimate!
> 
> Let me know what you think of this chapter and the fic so far!!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	5. Tests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam finds himself helping Jack with something a lot more complicated than his grades.

That next Friday kept the promise of their new plans to meet up once every two weeks. Liam was sitting in the chair across from Theo’s desk again, this time feeling a lot less threatened now that his job wasn’t on the line while Theo was in his big leather chair.

They were talking about Jack, naturally, and about his grades. More importantly, they were talking about his behavior, and Liam found it wasn’t nearly as hard to tell Theo that he’d been doing a good job as a father as he thought it would be. 

“He’s been doing a lot better in these recent weeks,” Liam said. “Both with his assignments and his behavior in my class. I’m pretty sure he actually stopped himself from swearing in front of me once. That was pretty impressive,” Liam joked. A ghost of a smile crossed Theo’s face. “How do you think he’s been feeling at home?” 

Theo thought about it for a moment. “Better, I think,” He settled on. “I mean, I haven’t been around a lot to see it before a few weeks ago, so I’m not sure.”

Liam nodded. “How much would you say you were at home  _ before _ we started talking about this?” He asked.

Theo shrugged. “Not as much as I should’ve been,” He admitted. “I travel around for work when I have a project going, and there’s not a lot that’s set in stone in that regard. I could never really estimate when I was taking a break and coming home. Usually when I did, it was only for a few days at a time,” Theo said. “One of my new projects in Aruba actually just wrapped up, so I can stay here for awhile.”

“Good,” Liam said. “Well, it’s making a difference on Jack that you’re around more...but what happens when you have to travel again for a new job?”

Theo sighed like he had been thinking about that before Liam asked. “I honestly don’t know,” He said, tapping his finger on his desk. “If I’m working in the summer, which it seems like I will be this year, I take Jack with me sometimes, but there’s not a lot I can do when he’s in school.” Liam nodded, understanding that. It was a tougher situation than Liam had thought. Theo smiled a little. “When he was smaller I used to take him to the resorts while they were being built. I’d always try to have the kids’ area done first so that he could play there. He had a good time,” Theo reminisced. His smile faded into one that was sadder. “...Although I guess that doesn’t count for much now that he’s older, huh?”

Liam wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he gave Theo an albeit awkward but sympathetic smile. “I’m sure he remembers,” He offered. Theo shrugged again, seemingly putting himself back together. He squared his shoulders and cleared his throat. 

“Well, how much do  _ you _ get to travel for work?” Theo asked, changing the subject to Liam. Liam was kind of amused that he was entirely serious with his question.

“I’ve been to a history museum a few times,” Liam said, a hint of sarcasm slipping into his voice. “Oh, and to the park once or twice. It’s no Aruba, but it’s fun,” He joked.

Theo tried to keep his grin to himself. “...Clearly I have a lot more to learn,” He said almost sheepishly. “What other interesting things do you do as a teacher, then?”

Liam grinned at him, taking the opportunity. “Oh, besides exclusive wine tastings and testing out Rolexes? It’s a lot of papers and the constant kind of gritty feeling of a classroom…”

+++

A few days later, Liam was taking attendance to make sure that no one was late, and he was surprised to see that Cass wasn’t there. She had a near-perfect attendance record and Liam had seen her come into school under a myriad of bad conditions, so he glanced back at her seat a second time after he found it empty. It wasn’t like her to miss school or be late to class. 

Jack didn’t seem happy about it either. He sat at his desk for most of the period with his arms folded tightly across his chest, and if the look on his face wasn’t completely blank, his eyebrows were furrowed and he was looking over at where she was supposed to be. Liam felt bad for him. He remembered how much it sucked back when he was in school when one of his friends was absent. 

But life still had to go on, and so did participation in class. Liam wasn’t too keen on letting Jack slide back into his slump after the progress he’d been making, so he decided to see if he could get something out of him. He walked up to Jack’s desk as carefully as usual. Jack’s gaze snapped to him immediately. “Hey, is everything alright?” Liam asked with a kind smile on his face.

Jack’s face switched emotions in a way Liam could only describe as impressive at how fast they were. He went from bored and neutral to a look of shock and slight nervousness, then settled just as fast into incredulousness. “I’m  _ fine _ ,” Jack sneered, acting offended that Liam had even asked. “I’m just tired.” Liam glanced over to Cass’s empty desk, but he held up his hands in surrender and walked back to the front of the room. 

He still wondered what was going on with Jack, but he seemed to have some kind of mood swing every other day anyway, so he assumed that it would be something new by tomorrow. Jack kept his head down the rest of the period when he wasn’t texting, and Liam busied himself with putting new grades into the computer. 

+++

By the end of the day, Liam was definitely ready to go home. He’d gotten into an argument with one of the gym teachers who loved to share his bigoted political opinions in the teachers’ lounge, and it had worn Liam’s resolve pretty thin trying not to yell at him that he’s been complaining about pride month to a gay man for the past four years. One of these days, Liam swore he was going to snap, and it would of  _ course _ be a co-worker who brought it on. Liam was still rolling his eyes by the time he was packing up his things to go home, hoping he wouldn’t run into him in the faculty parking lot.

He cleaned up his once again unorganized desk and put his file of ungraded work into his bag. He was about to start shutting down his desktop when his door, still unlocked for the students’ school day, opened unexpectedly. 

Liam had thought it was going to be Mrs. Martin coming to berate him about something, but instead he looked up in surprise to find Jack striding towards him quickly. He looked both panicked and resigned at the same time when he reached Liam’s desk, out of breath from rushing across the school to get back to his classroom. “Hey, Jack, what’s-?” Liam started, confusion seeping into his voice. 

“I think Cass is pregnant,” Jack blurted, his hands resting on the outside of Liam’s desk, and Liam felt his heart drop into his stomach.  _ Holy shit.  _ He’d never heard this one before. 

“ _ Oh, _ my God, um-” Liam stammered in surprise, blinking up at Jack with wide eyes, but Jack wasn’t listening. Instead, he accidentally knocked the cup of pencils over to spill across Liam’s desk.

“ _ Fuck _ , I’m sorry, I just- I didn’t know who else to tell, but I had to tell  _ someone _ , and all my other teachers hate me and would rat me out to Mrs. Martin-” Jack tried to explain through whirling thoughts. This was the most words in a row Liam had ever heard him speak, and that plus the urgency of it had Liam almost as panicked as Jack was. His prior anger was forgotten and he tried to reign in his own shock for Jack’s sake. “S-so I had to-”

“Okay, it’s okay,” Liam said gently, rising up out of his seat to meet Jack at eye level. He put his hands out in front of him cautiously and motioned for Jack to breathe. “Let’s- let’s calm down for a second.” Jack managed to glare at him through his anxiety, but Liam couldn’t blame him. His advice was shitty, but it was the best he could muster up. “Why do you think Cass is pregnant?”

Jack seemed to struggle with the words for a second, looking up at the ceiling as he tried to find them. Liam was starting to worry he was working himself into a panic attack by the time he managed to speak again, however garbled and fast. “Because it’s been two months since we... _ you know _ . It was before we started dating and it was kind of a hate thing, but now she’s late and she keeps feeling sick. She threw up this morning and I just-  _ God _ ,” Jack breathed. Liam nodded, listening to him as he tried to figure out what the hell he could do. “I like her a lot, I  _ do _ , but I can’t be a  _ father- _ ”

“Okay, wait, we don’t even  _ know _ that she’s really pregnant yet,” Liam argued as a compromise, more just to calm him down than anything else. “She hasn’t taken any tests, has she?” Liam asked, hoping it wasn’t a dumb question. 

Jack shook his head. “No, she didn’t know how to get them…” Jack trailed. “Her mom works at the drugstore and would see either of us there.”

  
Liam sucked in a nervous breath. On one hand, he had entirely no idea what to do about this - usually the only quick-thinking Liam had to do as a teacher was for lockdown drills and sudden lesson changes, not about possible teen pregnancy. On the other hand, Jack was looking at him,  _ him _ , for advice and help, and Liam couldn’t exactly tell him there wasn’t anything he could do. The first thing he thought of was risky, but it seemed like the only plan. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Liam said decisively and calmly, meeting Jack’s eyes. “I’m gonna drive down to the drugstore and you’ll follow me in your car and wait in the back of the parking lot for me. I’ll…” Liam stuttered, realizing the more he spoke the more odd this sounded. “I’ll buy you the tests.”

Jack looked at him in surprise, doubt creeping onto his face. “...You’d  _ do _ that?” He asked, unable to keep the slight awe out of his voice, and Liam nodded.

“I’m not about to just leave you to  _ worry _ about this, you’ve got to know,” Liam said, gathering up his papers and shoving them into his bag haphazardly. “Now, go and get your car, and when you see me pull out of the lot, start following.”

Jack nodded frantically and all but ran out of Liam’s classroom. Liam finished packing everything up and walked out a minute later, trying to not look like he was in as much of a rush as he was.

He got in his car and put the Walgreens a few streets away into his GPS. Once he was on the road, he glanced in his rearview mirror every so often to make sure Jack’s car was following. They only lost sight of each other twice at stoplights, but they both pulled into the parking lot at around the same time. 

Following Liam’s instructions, Jack parked his much more expensive car towards the back of the parking lot under the branches of a few overhanging trees. Liam nodded to him once as he stepped out of his car and shut the door, and Jack gave him a nervous thumbs-up. Liam had too much second-hand anxiety to notice the out of character move for him.

It occurred to him then that this would be the prime example of his coworkers catching him in the Walgreens, so he moved fast and swiftly through the aisles. He made sure he wasn’t followed as he headed towards the back of the store where he knew the contraceptives and tests were. He faced the wall of options, suddenly very aware of his limited knowledge on pregnancy tests; after all, he had never had to worry about this kind of thing.

Liam looked all of them over, completely avoiding the cheaper ones altogether. Some of them looked hard to read and the symbols on them were either way too similar or made no sense at all, so he nixed those ones too. It wasn’t until he found the blue ones, the ones that told users very clearly in the words _ ‘pregnant’ _ or _ ‘not pregnant’ _ that he was satisfied.

  
They weren’t cheap, but what he  _ did _ know about pregnancy tests was that you were supposed to take a few of them just to make sure, so he took three of the good blue ones and one of the other brands in case the blue ones were wrong. He didn’t want Cass to take one wrong test, have some peace of mind, and then end up finding out she was pregnant anyway. That wouldn’t be pretty.

He took them up to the register. Liam saw why Jack didn’t want to come in and buy them himself and why Cass couldn’t, because the woman ringing him up looked like she could very well be Cass’s mother. Alarms went off in his head, but luckily, she didn’t seem to put the pieces together. “Good luck,” She said as she handed Liam the items in the bag, and Liam wanted to laugh. This was more on her than it was for him.

It felt like a spy mission, looking around the parking lot like Liam did as he came out of the store. After he was satisfied that there was no one around, Liam walked over as inconspicuously as he could to Jack’s car, where the boy was sunk low in his seat like he was hiding. “Here,” Liam said, looking at Jack through the cracked window. He pushed the bag through the opening for Jack to take, and he looked into it gratefully.

Jack looked over the tests and promptly found the receipt in the bottom of the bag. Liam cursed silently at himself as Jack looked at it in surprise. He’d meant to take that out before he gave them to him. “Twenty dollars a test?” Jack said incredulously, looking up at Liam with wide eyes. “You  _ have _ to let me pay you back for that.”

Liam shook his head, briefly thinking about the pizza he was going to buy that Friday but throwing that away. This was more important, anyway. “It’s fine, really,” Liam said sincerely, doing another survey of the parking lot to make sure he wasn’t being watched. Even if he was only giving Jack some pregnancy tests, the whole thing made him feel a little skeevy, like he’d just bought a prescription for him. He would’ve felt worse about it if he did nothing, though. 

Jack opened his mouth, clearly to protest, but his tired face rang true in the way his shoulders sagged in his front seat. “...Okay,” he said, sounding exhausted, and Liam felt bad for him. 

“Now, those say to take them in the morning, so Cass should do that as soon as she can tomorrow, and take  _ all _ of them. Make sure they’re all the same answer,” Liam said. Jack nodded his head intently. Liam’s voice faded into something more sympathetic. “And keep me updated, okay? If you need any more help with this, you let me know.”

Jack nodded again, something of a sad smile on his face. Liam felt for the kid, he really did. He didn’t need any more added stress in his life, and Liam was really hoping this would turn out okay for Jack and Cass. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jack said meekly. Liam smiled and took his cue to leave, still cautious as he made his way back towards his own car.

It wasn’t until he was halfway home that Liam felt secure enough to not get suddenly arrested for some reason, and that security allowed him to realize how fucking weird his life had gotten. If it wasn’t already out there with his roommates and the whole Theo situation, today had definitely pushed his life over into comedic territory. In all of his admittedly few years of teaching, he’d never thought he’d end up buying pregnancy tests for one of his students. 

He was shaking his head to himself as he pulled into the driveway, finding that his roommates were already home as usual. When he came in through the front door, Mason was walking by and raised an eyebrow at him. “How come you’re  _ never _ home on time anymore?” He asked. Nolan and Corey, who were on the couch, both laughed. Liam shrugged. He wished he knew himself.

“Well, today’s reason was that I was at the drugstore,” Liam said slowly, dropping his bag on the floor. His friends all nodded in understanding, about to let it go. “Buying pregnancy tests.”

That got a reaction. “Liam…” Corey started seriously. “I know it’s been awhile since you’ve gotten laid, but did you really-?”

“Oh, they’re not for me,” Liam said, sounding kind of hysterical as he held back tired laughter. “They were for  _ Jack _ and another girl in his class.” 

Nolan broke out into laughter as Liam threw himself down onto the couch with a thump. “Dude, are you kidding me?” He asked.

“I wish I was,” Liam mumbled into the couch cushion. “He didn’t want to go into the store to get them because his girlfriend’s mom works there, so I told him to follow me in his car and I’d go in and buy them for him.”

“Jack, as in Theo’s  _ son?” _ Corey asked. Liam nodded and hummed his confirmation into the couch. “Does he  _ know?” _

Liam had an  _ “oh shit”  _ moment  _ so _ profoundly that he almost broke his neck trying to take his face out of the couch. _ “Fuck,” _ He whispered to himself but loud enough for his friends to hear it. They stifled their laughs and Corey looked at him expectantly. “I hadn’t even  _ thought _ of Theo,” LIam breathed, his eyes wide. “Oh God, what am I gonna do  _ now… _ ” He groaned, faceplanting again and placing both his hands on the back of his head. 

“Well, I mean, you’ve got two options here,” Nolan said rather unhelpfully, but Liam couldn’t find it in him to scowl at him like he wanted to. “Tell Theo or don’t tell Theo.”

“Right,” Liam mumbled. “I could tell Theo and betray Jack’s trust that I’ll probably never earn back, or I could keep it from Theo and betray  _ Theo’s _ trust if he ever finds out,” Liam sighed. Corey patted him on the back sympathetically, long since used to Liam’s crises, especially ever since Jack Raeken came into his class. “I think I need a career change,” Liam said to himself.

+++

Liam slept on it, and by the time he woke up, he knew he couldn’t tell Theo. If he told Theo and Jack found out about it, he’d probably never be forgiven and all of the progress they’d made would be lost. Theo was an adult and would have to learn to deal with it like one. Besides, that would be a hell of an awkward conversation to have with a man who he was only just now starting to get along with on a professional level. 

But that wasn’t his biggest problem. What he was more worried about was the outcome of those tests, which he could only hope were taken and came out negative. While teen pregnancy wasn’t the  _ worst _ thing in the world and could work out for some, he knew Cass had plans to go abroad for college, and he wouldn’t want this to set her back. He came into work apprehensive.

He guessed it was a good sign that Jack and Cass came to class that day holding hands, but he couldn’t be sure just yet. 

During quiet work time, Liam tried to catch Jack’s eye by looking at him until he noticed. When Jack finally looked up at him, Liam tilted his head to the side in a silently concerned and questioning move, and ended up getting the attention of Cass as well. Jack nodded at him, a small smile on his face, and while Cass looked a little embarrassed at the situation when she did the same, all three of them were clearly running on the relief that filled them. 

Liam exhaled deeply as all of his worries about their well-being and possible baby were able to be forgotten about. All he could do was thank God that Cass and Jack were okay, and once again, Theo slipped his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!
> 
> I just want to say that I wasn't at all trying to say anything bad about teenage pregnancy or teen mothers here. I have a ton of respect and sympathy for women who go through it, and I know that it can be a blessing in disguise for some, but for Cass and Jack, it wouldn't have been. This wasn't at all intended to say that anyone who's had a child in high school did something wrong :( I felt like I should clarify that, lol.
> 
> Also, I want to let you guys know that seeing your support for Jack as both a character and a person means so much. I wasn't originally going to have him be a huge part of the plot, or at least not as big of one as he is, but with you guys' support and comments, he was given a much bigger part here. I'm so glad it happened too...I don't think this would be the same without Jack. Thank you guys so much.
> 
> Anyways...the next chapter will be out in a few days, but for now, I've gotta sleep.  
> Let me know about this chapter in the comments!!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	6. Cherie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam sees an interesting magazine cover at the store, and something comes back to bite him.

“Okay, Corey said that we’d probably need another carton of milk,” Mason said, looking around the grocery store cluelessly while Liam stood by his side. One would think that as adults their age, Mason and Liam would be well acquainted with the grocery store in their town by now, but Corey was usually the one to go shopping for all four of them. It just so happened that the power went out one night and all the food in their fridge spoiled, so they had to replace all of it while Corey was on a weekend shift. That meant they’d been stuck in the grocery store for two hours and were barely halfway through their long list.

“I swear I’ve never even  _ seen _ goat cheese in our fridge. Are we sure Nolan isn’t just adding random shit onto the list?” Liam grumbled as he examined a hunk of cheese. Mason shrugged.

“Get it anyway. He’ll pitch a fit if we come home without it,” Mason sighed. Liam rolled his eyes and threw it into the cart. There were many other ways that he’d liked to have spent his Saturday morning, and now it seemed like he was going to be sacrificing his afternoon for this as well. 

At least there were interesting things to look at when he went to the grocery store, and now that he was an adult, he was free to buy them. He was a victim to Mason’s raised eyebrow as he threw things into the cart that they didn’t need, but Liam ignored him. He was a fully grown adult with a steady income, so if he wanted gummy candy, they were getting gummy candy.

Luckily, most of the other things on the list were easy enough to find, so they were almost done an hour later. They had a cart full of stuff that would undoubtedly take forever to ring up, but Liam was looking forward to getting out of there either way. Besides, marketplace science made it so all the attention-grabbers like candy and tabloids were at the checkout counters for people to impulsively buy, and Liam liked looking at all of them.

Ever since he was a kid, he’d look at the covers of magazines, no matter how trashy. His mom had always warned him every time he looked at one of them that a lot of those headlines and gossip cover blurbs were the fakest of the fake information out there, but Liam didn’t care. He got all of his information about actors he knew pretty much nothing about from those covers, no matter how fake.

His eyes glossed over all the shiny magazine covers when they pulled their shopping cart into the checkout line. There were the commonplace covers with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt on them, claiming that there was something new and dramatic about their divorce that had happened years ago, and a couple with William and Kate and yet another possible new baby (Liam had lost count of how many they were supposed to have had by now according to various tabloids), but nothing new. When he finished scanning the popular magazines, his eyes fell to the ones at the bottom of the rack, and that was when he was really surprised.

“What?” Mason asked when he noticed Liam staring at something towards the floor. Liam pointed uncertainly at one of the lesser-known magazines,  _ Cherie _ , which was mainly about fashion. Liam would have ignored it before because there was no drama to occupy himself with, but this one had something different about it.

“...I know that name from somewhere,” Liam said. 

“I mean, she’s a minor-level model. Clinique shoots and stuff,” Mason said simply. “She lived in the area for awhile, you’ve probably heard it from the locals.”

Liam shook his head, crouching down thoughtfully to pick it up. “No…” He trailed, trying to think of where he’d seen it before. When he realized, it hit him like a freight train. “I think this is Theo’s  _ ex-wife,” _ He decided, getting up to show Mason.

“ _ Oh _ ,” Mason said, eyebrows raised. “Wow. Theo was married to her?”

“If it’s the right Tracy Stewart, then yes,” Liam said, looking down at the cover scrutinizingly. “I mean, she  _ does _ kind of look like Jack in a way, now that I think about it.” That was true; while Jack looked a lot like Theo, there were hints of Tracy in there as well. “I’ve never met her before, she never came to back-to-school-night or anything. Theo was just the first on Jack’s contact list, so I never reached out to her.”

“She’s pretty,” Mason commented. Liam nodded dumbly as Mason took the magazine from him and flipped through it. It was mostly pictures of new designs and clothes, but he found the interview with Tracy and his eyes widened at how long it was. “ _ Jesus _ , how many questions could they even have asked her…?” Mason whispered to himself. 

“Put it on the counter, I’ll read it when we get home,” Liam said, feeling like it was necessary. For whatever reason, it felt weird to think about Theo’s ex-wife, but he still wanted to know more. She’d really never come up with Jack or Theo.

“I’m reading it too,” Mason said as he tossed the issue of Cherie onto the conveyor belt. “Now you’ve got me all invested.”

+++

Liam made himself and Mason put away all the groceries they’d bought (and present the goat cheese to Nolan, who laughed and said he couldn’t believe they  _ actually _ got it) before they sat down to read the magazine. It was sitting on their coffee table calling out for him to read it, and Liam was impatient until the very last thing was placed in their now-working fridge.

Liam was trying to exercise some restraint and poise when it came to this so it didn’t look weird, but Mason had no problem hopping over the back of the couch. He clearly had no problem reading about Liam’s colleague’s ex-wife, but Liam was starting to feel a little off about it.

“This kind of seems like an invasion of privacy,” Liam said, hesitating opening the issue as he held it in his lap. Mason rolled his eyes.

“She did the interview and it ended up in our grocery store, so it’s public domain now. Besides, don’t you want to know about her?” Mason goaded. “Don’t you want to know if she said anything about  _ Theo?” _

Liam sighed and opened it up, trying not to think too hard about the way Mason had convinced him to do it. He leafed through the pages to find Tracy’s interview, understanding why Mason was balking at how long it was, and started on the first page.

From what Tracy was saying, Liam knew he was right in thinking that she was Theo’s ex. Some of the answers about her son and ex-husband were more vague than others, but some of them were just downright mean. Even though she never mentioned him by name, they were still kind of harsh. Liam knew that if this interview and book she was writing was about him, he’d be pretty hurt by it. 

**_Q: “Well, how are you doing now, post-divorce?”_ **

**_A:_ ** _ “I’m doing just fine. I’ve never felt more free. While it hurt at first to break up with my husband, I know it was for the best, both for me and our son. I can’t honestly see now why I was with him in the first place...maybe I never loved him at all.” _

“That’s fucking  _ cold _ ,” Mason said with a whistle as Liam read it over again and again. 

Liam nodded slowly, his eyes still glued to the page. Reading what she was saying about Theo put a sick feeling in his stomach, for what Liam didn’t even know. He had no idea how Theo and Tracy’s marriage had really gone, but it still made Liam oddly upset to read it. As much as he’d hated Theo before and continuously made fun of him presently, Liam had the gut feeling that this wasn’t fair.

Even if what Tracy was saying about Theo was true, that wasn’t the Theo that Liam had come to know in the last few weeks. Just being an acquaintance, Liam could still see that Theo may not have been the best father before, but that wasn’t  _ him _ , not anymore. Sure, Theo may be a rich guy who’s way too used to his wealth, but he wasn’t the neglectful dad that Tracy was shaping him up to be. He was stubborn and difficult at times, but Theo wasn’t this villain. He was trying his best where he could have easily given up, and he’d probably thought he was doing the right thing in trying to provide for his family when Jack was younger. 

Seeing somebody else call Theo out for things didn’t sit right with Liam. When Liam did it, it was funny. When someone else did it, it was hurtful.

It made him kind of nauseous to think about Theo having to read all this stuff about him. He hoped that Theo didn’t go to grocery stores that sold gossip magazines like this, but he knew that was a high hope. “You alright there?” Mason asked, a hint of amusement in his voice, and Liam nodded. 

“Yeah,” He said like it was obvious, brushing it off. Mason raised an eyebrow and smirked in a way Liam didn’t like.

“Just checking,” Mason said teasingly, making Liam wack him in the forehead with the closed magazine.

+++

Otherwise, things had been going pretty good since the whole teen-pregnancy scare. Liam’s life got easier the more Jack got used to being a functioning part of his class, and the little victories made his work days worth it. After Liam had bought Jack the pregnancy tests, he’d been nodding to him as he walked into the classroom every day. Before, he didn’t acknowledge Liam’s presence at all, and if he did, it was never positively. Liam counted that as a good sign.

One day, Jack even raised his hand to answer a question about imperialism. Liam had asked what it was defined as, just to remind them, and was surprised to see that Jack’s hand went up. “Jack?” He prompted.

“The policy in which a strong nation dominates other countries politically, socially, or economically,” Jack said without hesitation. Liam was impressed. The definition came straight from the book, and it made it even more impressive that Jack hadn’t even  _ looked _ at it. He just knew the definition off the top of his head from a lesson a few days ago.

“Good,” Liam praised as he wrote that down on the board. He wasn’t shocked that Jack knew the definition, but he  _ was _ shocked that he’d volunteered to share it like that.

That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t pleased. He was even happier when Jack came to his desk to turn in the worksheet they’d been given, which had both multiple choice and short-response formatted questions. This time around, Jack had taken the care to actually answer the multiple choice questions thoughtfully, and his responses to the written questions were thorough and good. Liam grinned to himself as he was able to put yet another 100 on the top of Jack’s page. 

When he put the grade into the gradebook, the computer automatically averaged his overall grade - he’d gone up another point. Just a few points more and he would be in the ‘B’ range, even though the D and C he had were just as impressive of a change from how it had used to be. 

Liam would be sure to tell Theo about it when they were scheduled to meet that night.

+++

Liam wasn’t actually dreading meeting Theo that day. In fact, he pulled into Theo’s driveway and didn’t even do his habitual sigh of exasperation before he got out of the car. He just went up to Theo’s front door easily.

Instead of Theo answering the door for him like he usually did, Alice, Theo’s maid, got it for him that time. Liam stepped in with a polite smile and made his way towards Theo’s office. 

On his way down the long hallway, he caught sight of that issue of  _ Cherie _ sitting on a table and cringed to himself. He’d been wondering if Theo had seen it or read it yet, but he guessed the ship had sailed on that one. 

He tried to put it out of his head and focus on the meeting, but when he got to Theo’s study, it was clear that he was a little more tense than normal. The sleeves of his button-down shirt were rolled up just below his elbows and he’d taken his tie off. Still, Liam didn’t say anything about it. “Hi,” Liam greeted as usual when Theo opened the door for him. Theo nodded to him and shut the door behind him. 

Instead of sitting in the ridiculously big chair like he usually did, Theo stayed standing after getting the door.  _ Maybe he was in a hurry and wanted to make this go as quick as he could, _ Liam thought. Liam, being who he was, tried to be as helpful and usual with this. “So, Jack’s been doing really well since our last meeting,” Liam said, getting right into it. “He turned another assignment in today, and he’s really close to bumping his grade up to a C.”

“That’s good,” Theo said tightly. “Do you think it’s still possible for him to have a B by the end of the school year?”

Liam smiled. “I do. As long as he keeps working like he is now, he could be at a high B by the time we finish up. Even his participation grade is doing better. Today he volunteered to answer a question in class for the first time in awhile. He’s doing so much better than when we started, thanks to you being around more.”

Theo nodded stiffly, but didn’t say anything else. Liam stood there kind of awkwardly, still holding his messenger bag on one shoulder as he waited for something to come from him - nothing did. Usually when they met like this, they would have fallen into natural conversation by now. Today, they had gotten everything out of the way right in the beginning. Liam decided to try and go onto something else. “So-”

“I overheard Jack yesterday talking on the phone with a friend. He was afraid his girlfriend was pregnant,” Theo said, his voice firm and measured. Liam felt his heart drop into his stomach much like it did when Jack had come to him about it in the first place. “Did you happen to know about any of that?”

Liam was frozen in place, feeling both too cold and too hot with nerves. With everything that had been going on, he’d pretty much forgotten about Jack and Cass’s pregnancy scare. He never heard anything about it again from either of them or from Theo, so he thought it was in the clear.

One thing that everyone knew about Liam was that he was never a good liar. Lies of omission, like not telling Theo, were much easier than this. It would be a flat lie to tell Theo that he never knew anything about it, and Liam couldn’t do that. 

“...I did,” He admitted, his voice sounding too quiet and nervous in such a large room. Theo looked at him expectantly, green eyes pinning him in place and demanding him to speak more, and Liam’s shoulders slumped in. “He told me about it one day after school a few weeks ago and I…I bought him the tests for her to take,” Liam said. “I’m sorry for not telling you. I just didn’t want to screw Jack over.”

Liam noticed for the first time then that Theo had a tick in his jaw, just a small twitch and clench. His eyes were set hard and cold, his lips drawn together tightly, but he didn’t say anything for a minute. When he did, he breathed in deeply, still tense, and closed his eyes on the exhale. 

“It’s...okay,” Theo grit out. He sounded like he wanted to be mad but couldn’t, and Liam was relieved for that little bit of resolve that Theo had. Theo swallowed, looking away from him. His gaze focused on the floor next to Liam instead. “I’m glad he trusts you enough to tell you. It’s good that he has someone to go to,” Theo said, hurt creeping into his voice. Liam’s lips parted in concern. “...Even if that someone isn’t me.”

Liam had never seen Theo like this before. Whenever they talked, he was always set and strong with himself. It made Liam think back to the first time he’d been to Theo’s house, where Theo had sized him up and demanded an apology with his body language alone. He’d never been questioning himself then, clear in the way he was able to pick Liam apart.

_ Until _ , Liam remembered, Liam had snapped. Theo’s intimidation hadn’t worked on him then, and he’d told him exactly what he thought of him. 

_ “I don’t want him to go down a bad path just because you got offended because I implied you were a shitty father, which in all honesty, maybe you are!” _

Realization dawned on him, and it felt worse than how it had when he’d seen the magazine cover. “Hey,” Liam said gently, stepping towards Theo cautiously. Theo looked at the ground instead of him. “...You know I didn’t mean it when I said you were a bad father, right? I was just angry.”

Theo looked at him then, a self-deprecating smirk on his face. “But you were right,” He argued. Liam’s stomach filled with a sad heaviness at the way Theo was looking at him. “Whether you meant it or not, you were right. You were just the only one who ever had the guts to tell me. I’m never around for him and I never was, so why would I think he would tell me about that?” Theo asked himself more than Liam. “ _ Fuck _ , if I were him, I wouldn’t tell me either, but he should be able to. I’m his  _ father _ . That’s my  _ job _ ,” Theo breathed. “That’s the  _ one _ thing I have to be and I still-” Theo cut himself off, shaking his head.

Silence hung between them as Theo breathed slowly, and Liam stepped forward. “But you’re getting better,” Liam said, no trace of doubt in his voice. Theo met his eyes, looking surprised that he’d said anything at all. It was as if he had expected Liam to leave, or maybe tell him he was right. Liam wondered how long it had been since someone was here to reassure him. 

He didn’t know why, but something was calling him to reach out and touch his arm. His fingers wrapped softly around the exposed skin of Theo’s tan forearm, hoping he wasn’t crossing a line. Theo’s eyes flicked down to where they were touching, but Liam tried to hold his gaze.  _ “You’re getting better,” _ he repeated, firmly and determinedly to make Theo get it.

It took a few seconds, tense seconds in which Theo stared into his eyes with the same stunned expression he’d had on, but he finally broke. A soft, sad smile crossed Theo’s lips and he nodded, and even though Liam wasn’t entirely convinced that Theo had accepted what Liam said in full, he was willing to give Theo the out. He dropped his hold on Theo’s arm, and Theo nodded towards that fancy-looking liquor decanter he had on his side table. 

“Want a drink?” He asked quietly, obviously trying to get some semblance of normality back in the room, and Liam wasn’t about to deny him that right.

He sat down on the small couch in the study and watched as Theo poured whiskey out of the crystal that Liam still thought looked ridiculous, but he took it gratefully anyway. He sipped slowly at the expensive-tasting alcohol as Theo joined him, watching the other man try to unwind. 

“So...you bought him the tests?” Theo asked. Liam nodded, still a little nervous about the subject. Luckily, Theo didn’t seem concerned about that part anymore. “How much were they?”

Liam winced at that, scratching the back of his neck. “Around seventy-five,” He admitted. 

Theo’s eyes just about bugged out of his head. “ _ Jesus _ , and he didn’t pay you back? I swear to God, that kid…” Theo sighed, reaching for his back pocket.

“I wouldn’t let him,” Liam reassured. “He said he would when he had the cash on him, but I told him not to.”

“He’s got an  _ allowance _ ,” Theo said, leafing through his wallet and pulling out the money, which was a lot more than Liam would ever carry in his own wallet and more than he was even owed. Theo held out two fifties to him, and Liam shook his head.

“Seventy-five dollars won’t break me,” Liam declined, holding up a hand, but Theo pushed it at him anyway.

“Maybe not, but as little as I know about schools, I know that you’re underpaid already,” Theo said. When Liam didn’t take it, he put it on the table and slid it towards him. Theo stared at him until Liam finally decided to put them both out of their misery and put it in his pocket. Theo nodded approvingly. “Use that to buy something nice.”

Liam knew it was going towards his share of the rent that month, but he nodded anyway. “Yes,  _ sir _ ,” He said, jokingly-serious as he sipped on his drink. Theo raised an eyebrow at him at the name and had an unidentified look on his face, which made Liam laugh into his glass and narrowly avoid spilling the rest of his drink. It didn’t take Theo long to smile and roll his eyes with him, acting like Liam wasn’t funny.

As they sat there in the dim lighting of Theo’s study, Liam looked at him closely for the first time. Theo still had the remnants of a smile on his full lips, and he would admit that he understood the big deal his roommates made about Theo’s looks. He’d always known Theo was objectively attractive, but seeing him relaxed while the last of the sunlight coming in from the windows bounced off his face was different than seeing him under the fluorescent lights of a classroom. There, he was just a good-looking man. Here, prefaced by the thoughts under his surface, Theo was on the verge of beautiful if he hadn’t already tipped over into it.

Liam looked away then, drawing in a breath. He put those thoughts away, since it wouldn’t do him much good to be distracted, and worked on his drink instead. He took a second one when Theo offered, and they talked quietly about Jack, but also about Theo. 

He wasn’t a bad guy. Liam knew that days ago, weeks ago, even, but he really knew it now. Theo wasn’t a bad guy, not even a little bit.

Even if he drank his liquor out of fuckin’ crystal glasses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this chapter!!
> 
> Can you tell I'm having fun with the magazine covers and graphics? I think I need to find more excuses to put images into my stories, lol. I just like designing them :)  
> This chapter was honestly so fun to write. Any chapter with a lot of Theo in it is fun to write, really. I just adore him, canon or not.
> 
> *Also, if you were wondering about Theo's drinking and medication - as far as I know, lexapro causes drowsiness and the chance of increased depression/anxiety symptoms when it's mixed with alcohol, and not a lot of other side effects. I didn't know how to add that in there without it being awkward, but I feel like it was something important to note.
> 
> Let me know what you think about this one!! I'm super excited to see what you think about this one, since it was one of my favorite chapters to write yet :)))


	7. Conference Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam isn't expecting Theo and his family to show up for parent-teacher conferences, but it's not like he expected anything that happened after that, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! I ended up having to restart the entire chapter because it just wasn't flowing well. It did turn out to be the longest chapter so far, totaling at around 7k words, so enjoy!!

Liam’s classroom wasn’t buzzing like it normally was one Thursday morning. It was hard to get his students to participate and listen to what he was teaching that day, and he knew exactly why: parent-teacher conferences were always a kicker and brought his classes’ productivity down to a lull. Liam understood; parent-teacher conferences screwed up the entire schedule in a day, since the kids would be out early tomorrow to make time for parents to come to the school, meaning classes were shorter and distractions were more prone in a faster-paced day. There was also the overall stress of conferences that kids had to worry about.

Liam still hated the idea of making kids come back to school with their parents for conferences, since he’d detested it back when  _ he’d _ gone to school here. Principal Martin had always seemed to think it was important for students to attend these conferences too, meaning Liam had been dragged along to sit through conversations between his mother, terrible father, and his teachers. He knew it was especially draining for kids without spotless grade and behavior records, too. 

So as he was trying to teach his second period class about World War I, it wasn’t going too well. However, he still had to keep his students going. 

As his teaching philosophy, Liam always tried not to talk for an entire period, but there were times when it was necessary to be up and teaching a lesson and not letting his kids do worksheets and independent assignments. “Come on, guys, I know you want me to stop talking, but I can’t do that. You’ve gotta help me out a little and answer some of these questions for me,” Liam reasoned with them, and considering they were sixteen-year-olds, it wasn’t the most effective.

Liam caught a murmur of _ “don’t you know these things already?” _ from Jack, which was true, but Liam still had to stop himself from rolling his eyes anyway at the jab. At least he hadn’t made a big deal about it like he used to. It was even a little funny this time, but Liam was ignoring that.

He sighed and turned back to his board, which was as unorganized and unhelpful to look at as his lesson had probably been to listen to. “Okay, we can skip that question. Austria-Hungary threatened war on  _ Serbia _ , if any of you are still bothering to take notes,” He sighed the last part to himself. His class had long since stopped paying attention to him, more focused on the phones Liam was beginning to regret letting them have out in class, so only a few people were still writing down what he was teaching. “Here’s an easy one, we went over this a little bit yesterday. Can anybody tell me how the roles women played in society changed once World War I started?” He asked, his writing becoming even more slanted as he tried to find room on the board for _ ‘Women’s roles =’. _

He turned back towards his class, unsurprisingly finding that Cass was still paying attention with her hand up. Liam looked at her with a smile, but she’d already answered three questions that period, so he had to ignore her. “Anybody that isn’t Cass?” He asked. Jack laughed quietly, Cass swatted at him playfully with the hand that wasn’t still raised, and everyone else pretended not to hear him. Some of them were taking the eye contact-avoidance route and others were playing it the opposite way by looking right at him, but Liam was too tired to call on someone random and hope. “Alright, Cass,” Liam said, only a little bit of the exhaustion in his voice joking.

“They started working in factories and became army nurses,” Cass said. “And they did what were considered men’s jobs before, like manufacturing war materials and keeping the economy up. They changed society’s view of what women were capable of.” She said the last part with a little bit of awe that made Liam smile. He’d always admired how unafraid she was for everyone to know she was a feminist. 

“That’s right,” Liam praised. He caught Jack looking at her with pride, which was cute, but he had to focus on trying to fit that on the board. He scribbled down _ ‘Army nurses, factory workers, manufacturing, economy, change in beliefs’ _ messily, but like he said, most of his students had given up on taking notes. That and the lack of space on the board made Liam relent for the day. Class was almost over, anyway. “Okay, since I screwed up on the board again, you guys can start your homework in class today. It’s up by the bin if you want to grab it,” Liam said, sitting down into his chair. He swore he heard a few sighs of relief that he was finally done talking and the risk of being called on was gone.

Jack came up with a few other students to grab papers. He took one for himself and one for Cass, but didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he looked at the board with amusement while Liam raised an eyebrow at him. “I think you spelled  _ ‘women’ _ wrong,” Jack pointed out. Liam looked behind him. 

“I  _ didn’t _ , actually,” Liam said. “That ‘e’ is just the product of me trying to write without getting my sleeves into blue chalk,” He said, jokingly triumphant. Jack smirked at him and Liam grinned as he walked back to his desk. Jack was kind of a cool kid when he wasn’t tormenting him. 

Most of his students didn’t start the assignment and continued to zone off and talk out of stress, but Liam didn’t mind. He went onto his computer instead, figuring that he’d check his email in case anyone was coming to see him for conferences tomorrow night. Usually, people came and went as they pleased without a set schedule and he didn’t really know who he was going to see, but some parents were helpful enough to give him a heads-up.

He noticed he had a new email from Theo, which stood out to him just from his inbox. It wasn’t like him not to use the subject line. When he opened it up out of interest, it was even more confusing.

  
  


_ TO:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _  
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ FROM:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.net _ _  
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ SUBJECT: [no subject] _

Liam couldn’t help but smile to himself as he saw it, no matter how bewildered he was.

  
  


_ TO:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.net _ _  
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ FROM:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _  
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ SUBJECT: Re: [no subject] _

_ Did you send that to the wrong person? _

_ Liam Dunbar _ _  
_ _ History Teacher _ _  
_ _ Beacon Hills High School _

  
  


The response came surprisingly fast, making Liam wonder if Theo had been waiting for his reply. He reminded himself that that was wishful thinking (even though he wasn’t willing to admit WHY it was wishful) and that Theo had probably just happened to be doing work stuff.

  
  


_ TO:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _  
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ FROM:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.net _ _  
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ SUBJECT: Re: [no subject] _

_ No, sorry. Thought you would like it. _

  
  


Something about how apologetic Theo was made Liam grin to himself in amusement. He tilted his monitor away from his students on the far side of his room so they wouldn’t see him looking at pictures of cats, and he stealthily found one to send back.

  
  


_ TO:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.net _ _  
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ FROM:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _  
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ SUBJECT: Re: [no subject] _

_ It’s okay, I did like it. Just unexpected, is all. _ _  
_ _ _ _  
_ _ This one’s you. _

_ Liam Dunbar _ _  
_ _ History Teacher _ _  
_ _ Beacon Hills High School _

  
  


He didn’t get anything back after that, so he went back to looking over his classroom instead of cats. Jack and Cass were holding hands between the desks even though they clearly couldn’t write properly and do that at the same time, but he decided to just leave them be and not joke about it. Liam remembered what it was like to be in a cute high school relationship like that, so he wasn’t interrupting.

He wondered if Theo had ever been in any cute high school relationships and how they turned out. It was just one of the many questions Liam had been asking himself in the past couple of days, most of which, like that one, weren’t important, but still rattled around anyway. The next time he saw Theo, he’d try to work some of them into a conversation. Maybe he’d be graced to know his favorite color.

+++

Liam knew some of his co-workers hated parent-teacher conferences, but he didn’t. Despite his views on the stupid policy of making students attend, Liam thought it was important to meet with parents. As he’d clearly figured out by now, there was a lot you can tell about a student based on their parents. It was almost scary sometimes how mannerisms got picked up from parent to child. It was like how Theo and Jack both had their mock-surprise face used solely to piss people off, or the emphasis they put on certain words. It was funny.

Besides that, he thought it was important to meet with parents so they knew what was going on with their children. That was why he wished that the students didn’t have to come with their parents, because it pained Liam to see them shrink back in their seats every time Liam had to tell them bad news. He didn’t even want to think about what happened after conferences were over. He knew in his experience that after a conference with his father attending, Liam never heard the end of it. Liam cringed as he remembered how loud Brent Dunbar managed to yell sometimes when he was still in his life. He couldn’t imagine something like that happening to his own students.

He shook the thought off as he got his classroom ready for conferences. The students had all gone home awhile ago, the school having given the teachers an hour to prep for the conferences that would go until eight o’clock that night, so Liam had a long night ahead of him. He tried to make things as comfortable as possible. Instead of the large, fluorescent overhead lights, he turned on the lamps in the front corners of the room so that his classroom was dim but saturated in places with warm light. The regular lights gave Liam headaches on  _ good _ days, so he figured that everyone would appreciate it more if their eyes weren’t stinging through the entire meeting.

He set up three desks in front of his own, one for the student and two for possible parents, close enough that he could talk without it being an awkward distance. He also made sure he moved anything on the front of his desk that he could potentially knock over onto the meeting desks. Liam had never done that before, but God knew how often a bump of an elbow sent all of Liam’s pencils rolling on the floor, and he’d rather not have that happen in front of the people who entrusted him to give their child an organized education.

So far, he knew he was meeting with Cass’s parents and three others, so he took their files out first to have himself as prepared as possible. 

Other than that, there wasn’t a lot he could do. Once the announcement came over the loudspeaker that parents would start coming in soon, Liam headed out to the hallway to hold his door open and wait. He hoped he wouldn’t get too many walk-ins that night, since something had apparently gone down with Nolan and Alec and the house groupchat was freaking out about it. 

He occupied himself as he waited with sneaky glances at his phone (he was able to piece together through the keysmashes that Alec had ended up just having enough of Nolan’s bullshit and kissed him behind the bar) and imagining what his conferences were going to be like. None of the families who had given him a heads-up on their meetings had any history of being difficult, so he had high hopes for the perfectly routine, albeit dull, conference routines.

Three meetings and about two hours later, Liam was standing outside his door again waiting for the next people to come in to talk. He started catching glimpses of some of his students and their parents in the hallway, all the kids averting their eyes, so Liam could figure out who he was due to see and who he wasn’t. So far, he spotted three of his students, the ones he would have expected to see at conferences.

However, he wasn’t expecting to have to do a double take when he saw a familiar head of brown hair pass by his classroom. Jack didn’t turn to look at him, walking right past his classroom with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, but Liam could tell it was him. It wasn’t only because of the same black hoodie he always wore, either; he distantly heard a familiar voice coming from where the corner turned. 

“Jack, wait up,” Theo started, not yet where Liam could see him. That was when he noticed the click of heels coming along too, and Liam was pretty confident they weren’t Theo’s.

“Just let him  _ walk _ ,” a woman snapped just as she came into view. Liam knew exactly who she was as soon as he saw her dressed much too sophisticatedly for a public high school and the annoyed set of her eyes: Tracy. It was surprising enough for Liam to see Theo and Jack at a conference, but it was a whole other event now that Tracy had shown up. Liam wasn’t quite sure how  _ that _ happened.

Obviously, Tracy didn’t care about staying together with Theo in the hall, since she was walking much quicker than him, so fast and decisively that she was almost out of view by the time Theo turned the corner. His hands were in the pockets of his slacks, still dressed like he had come from the office, but he had his glasses on tonight. _ Maybe his contacts were bothering him _ , Liam thought absently before Theo’s eyes fell on him.

They hadn’t met in school after their initial first disaster of a meeting, so seeing Theo give him a small smile in recognition was jarring. As Tracy and Jack walked towards one of Jack’s other classes, Theo walked over to Liam instead. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Liam commented when Theo stopped in front of him, unable to keep the slight shock out of his voice. Theo seemed to pick up on it and gave a lighthearted smirk.

He nodded almost sheepishly. “Yeah. I figured that we should probably check in with Jack’s other teachers, too,” Theo admitted. Liam nodded. “But we’ll get to your’s towards the end. Something tells me his other teachers are going to have a lot more to say about him than you will.”

“Probably,” Liam agreed with a wince. Theo’s lips parted on a quiet laugh. “I feel bad that he has to be here, I always hated coming back for conferences.”

“Right, because you went here, didn’t you?” Theo said, remembering what Liam had said to him awhile back. Liam smiled.

“Yeah. Same principal, same dumb rule of requiring kids at the meetings,” Liam sighed. “Don’t tell her I said that,” He added.

“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me,” Theo said, putting his hands up. Liam laughed, making Theo grin, and they stood there in the slightly-crowded hallway with the quiet between them. Theo rocked back on his heels and Liam realized that he’d been fidgeting with his fingers ever since Theo had started talking to him, rubbing the pads of his middle, index finger, and thumb together by his side.

Theo looked good when he smiled for real, because it came up and folded the skin around his eyes into little crinkles. Even though the harsh light of the hallways wasn’t great, it certainly highlighted how green Theo’s eyes were the same way that Liam’s blue glowed. He wondered if Theo noticed, or if he’d even care at all if he did. He had an ex-wife after all, so he probably wasn’t even into men.

_ Why are you  _ _ worrying _ _ about this, you fucking idiot? _ Liam asked himself seriously when he found himself considering it. 

Liam cleared his throat and snapped himself out of it. “Well, I’ll see you, Jack, and...Tracy soon,” He said, hesitating on her name without meaning to. He knew Theo noticed it based on the movement of his eyes towards the floor, but Theo didn’t mention it. He didn’t want Theo to go, but one of his students and his parents were lingering a few feet away like they were politely waiting for Liam to be done talking, so he had to let him go.

“Right. Good luck,” Theo said. “Although maybe that’s more for me and not you.”

Liam chuckled quietly as Theo walked off, casting a glance back at him as he went off to follow Tracy and Jack. Their eyes held for a moment before Theo turned back, and Liam cleared his throat. The mother of this family was smiling at him sweetly, ready to come in. 

“Hey, come on in,” Liam greeted with a smile, pulling himself together and motioning towards his open classroom door.

+++

Most of Liam’s conferences came and went without much difficulty. Some of them were harder than others, like Cass’s family, where he and Cass both looked at each other and remembered the secret they were supposed to be keeping about her pregnancy scare, but they got it over with without any suspicion. Liam’s talking skills were smooth enough to glaze over his anxiety about suddenly being accused of something, and Cass had always been balanced enough to do the same. 

Other than that, things went according to plan. Most of his students had good grades and good behavior records in his class since he was considered a chill teacher, so he was pleased to give so many good reports. 

Of course, there was always the outlier. He didn’t know why he expected anything else, but things were tense from the moment he saw Theo, Tracy, and Jack walking towards his classroom at the end of the night. Just as Theo had said, they’d hit Jack’s other classrooms first before his, so this would probably be the last meeting of the night. That also meant that Tracy was tired of being there, and it showed. 

Theo had managed to finally get the three of them to walk together, which made Liam wonder how much arguing the guy had already been through that night, and he nodded to Liam politely as they approached. Now that they were with Theo’s family, there was an unspoken rule of casualness between them that Liam was trying his hardest not to break. “Welcome,” Liam said, gesturing towards the door. Theo came in first with a polite smile, Jack followed, and Tracy came in and looked around with an expression that could only read as disdain. 

Liam didn’t have to tell them to take a seat. Theo took the one on the left, Jack followed him to the middle, and Tracy once again lagged behind and took the right. All four of them were quiet as Liam settled into his own chair, suddenly feeling a lot more nervous than he’d thought he would be. He wished that he’d gotten a heads-up about this so that he could prepare a little more for keeping a secret and meeting Theo’s ex-wife for the first time. Not that he was owed one of course, since it wasn’t like he and Theo were  _ dating _ or anything. Liam bristled at his own thoughts. He didn’t know why he was being so weird about this and he pinched himself on the thigh under his desk as punishment for his stupid distractions. “How are you all doing?” He asked just to make conversation.

The first time Theo had been to his classroom, he didn’t allow any small talk, but Theo seemed to be taking on the leadership role of the night, playing along. It wasn’t like Tracy was exactly going to be the driving force of conference night, considering how bored she looked. Liam wondered if Theo and Tracy had married each other in part for their dislike of conversation, since she was ignoring him entirely. “We’re good,” Theo said. “You?”

“Great,” Liam said. He cleared his throat again, finding that he still felt like his voice was stuck. “Okay, I don’t know how Jack’s other teachers do their conferences, but I like to start mine with any questions you might have that I can answer for you.”

Theo nodded. “Yeah. How is his behavior doing in class as of late?” Theo asked. He already knew how it had been, which made Liam wonder if he had come to the conference with prepared questions. The thought was kind of funny. 

Jack shrunk back in his seat a little while Theo looked at Liam intently. “Well, there were definitely some bumps in the beginning of the semester,” Liam said, trying not to look at Jack too much and make him feel attacked. “But I think that a lot of it has leveled itself out. He’s been doing really good with behavior lately,” Liam said. Jack’s eyes snapped up to his as if he didn’t believe what Liam was saying, but Liam kept his eyes focused on Theo and Tracy. 

“And he’s been getting along with the other kids in his class?” Theo asked. “I mean, I know he has a girlfriend, but I was just wondering if he’s been causing any problems.”

Tracy, for the first time since she’d come in, stopped looking at her cuticles. “He has a girlfriend?” She asked, her question sounding cold and accusatory. Jack opened his mouth and closed it again when he saw the way her look was directed at Theo. “And you didn’t  _ tell _ me?”

“It wasn’t my thing to  _ tell _ ,” Theo said calmly, but his shoulders were tensed and the casual smile on his face was gone and replaced by something more anxious. “I thought you knew.”

“You never tell me  _ anything _ ,” Tracy huffed, rolling her eyes and looking away. Jack swallowed nervously and focused his eyes on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Theo said quietly.

Liam tried not to look at the picture this made too closely, because he knew he’d overthink it if he did. 

But the overthinking had already started. There wasn’t much else he could do, not when he’d been thinking about Theo so much already since the last time he saw him, the bout of vulnerability more telling than it should’ve been. He’d already asked himself millions of questions about him and only him, but now that Liam was realizing that Theo was here in the same room as Jack for the first time Liam had ever seen him, there were so many things he’d never considered. Everything was infinitely more complicated now that Tracy and Jack were there, and it made Liam start to recognize what he had walked into the middle of. This wasn’t just Theo’s life he was affecting - it was everyone involved with him too, his ex-wife and his son.

His son, who Liam noticed was always leaning closer to his father than his mother. Even if Tracy had been around more for him when he was younger, Jack’s shoulders were tilted towards Theo. He had been worried Liam was about to say something bad to Theo, and he still leaned to him instead of Tracy. Liam didn’t blame him, but it made him feel a number of things. He was glad Jack trusted his father, but it made him sick to think that before Theo had gotten better at this, Tracy wasn’t a good parent to come to, either.

“So, in class,” Liam said, keeping the croak out of his voice that threatened to come out. He swore he cleared his throat a million times that day. “Jack tends to keep to himself. He has friends there, but he’s quiet and respectful about it. There are times when I don’t think some of his classmates understand his... _ sense of humor _ ,” Liam said carefully but jokingly, making Jack smirk a little. “But overall there haven’t been any problems lately. Like I said, whatever streak he was going through has gotten a lot better.”

Theo nodded, the smile on his face coming back. He looked down at Jack with pride, and Jack’s face did some interesting thing of surprise and then embarrassment. He wasn’t used to being validated by his parents, but by the little smile on his face that he was trying to hide, he clearly appreciated it. “Is there anything else?” Liam asked.

Theo took a deep breath before turning to look at Tracy. “Do you have anything you want to ask?” He asked her carefully, keeping his tone calm and unassuming. It didn’t stop her from looking at Theo like he was something she had stepped in with her expensive heel.

She brushed a strand of hair out of her face with one manicured nail and looked at him with a sarcastic smile. “No,” She said, like her answer should’ve been obvious. “I don’t know why  _ you’re _ even asking questions, either. It’s not like you ever  _ bothered _ to go to one of these before,” she scoffed unforgivingly.

Theo went rigid, even worse than he had been through the rest of their meeting, and Jack slumped down, seemingly used to this. Something under Liam’s skin burned. He felt for Jack and being caught in the middle fo his parents like this, but he also wanted to wipe the look of guilt that Theo couldn’t hide off his face. He wanted to point out that  _ Tracy _ had never gone to any conferences  _ either _ , point out that Theo was actually  _ trying _ and had been the one making things better for the past months. He wanted to tell Theo that even though she was Jack’s mother, Tracy’s opinion of him didn’t matter - not if she was going to be so pessimistic about him without even letting him have a  _ chance _ . He wanted to tell him so much. 

But he didn’t. Liam knew deep down that telling Tracy off wasn’t going to help anything for anyone, and would probably just make things harder on Theo. For once, he shut his mouth. 

“His grades are good?” She asked. Liam nodded dumbly, half-afraid to speak. “Then we’re fine. We can  _ go _ now. Come on, J,” She said, getting up and slinging her purse over her shoulder decisively. 

Jack got up and shot a sympathetic look to Theo, who didn’t notice it with the way his gaze was zoned off onto the floor. 

Theo stood up last, despite being the one to come in first, with his smile completely gone. He looked bone-tired, and Liam couldn’t help but get up and walk with him as he slowly made his way to the door. 

Theo paused with his door on the handle, Tracy and Jack long-gone, and looked at Liam. “Jack’s going home with Tracy for the weekend tonight,” He started. “If you maybe wanted to move our meeting up a little earlier.”

Maybe it was the tired look in Theo’s eyes and the way it told Liam that Theo  _ really _ shouldn’t be alone right now, but he ignored that they’d just spent an hour talking and Theo was asking him to meet a week early. Conference night was over anyway, according to the wall clock.

He waited for Theo to catch up and say goodbye to Jack since Tracy never gave him the chance, and then followed him out to the parking lot.

+++

Theo took off his tie almost as soon as they got to Theo’s study, and rolled the sleeves of his button down shirt up to his elbows. He was silent as he headed right for the crystal bottle on the end table again, wordless as he had been the entire way there. They hadn’t spoken in the parking lot or when they both got to Theo’s house at the same time. Besides the greeting from Alice, there was nothing. 

Liam was left standing by the door awkwardly for a few seconds after he shut it, but he put his bag on the floor by the door and took his own tie off too. It had been a long night for both of them, and he didn’t think Theo would mind. He stopped at unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt like Theo had, though. 

He did walk over to Theo’s desk and lean back against it on his hands, watching as Theo poured a small glass of whiskey. Liam shook his head when Theo reached out to offer it to him. He was supposed to be there to listen, not to drink, even if that wasn’t Theo’s intention. With all the tension that Liam could see him holding the whole night, it was inevitable that it would all break soon. The only thing he wasn’t sure of was whether or not Theo would let it happen while Liam was there, but it was starting to look like he wasn’t going to have a choice. He downed his whiskey quickly while Liam watched patiently.

He waited until Theo was done his first glass and was distracting himself by swishing around the tiny bit of alcohol left in the bottom. “...You okay?” Liam asked gently, remaining where he was on the desk. 

Theo nodded, staring into his glass instead of Liam, but he bit his lip in a way that said the opposite. “That seemed...tense,” Liam said, unsure of how to put it.

Theo nodded again, this time with a small, self-deprecating smile on his lips. “Yeah,” Theo admitted. He tipped his glass back to get the last out and rubbed the space between his eyebrows, displacing his glasses a little. “They didn’t always used to be that way. Just so you know,” Theo said as more of an afterthought than anything else.

Liam looked at him, trying to piece together what Theo was going to say, but he was making it obvious that this wasn’t a puzzle either of them could solve themselves. “What happened?” He asked as gently as he had the first time, thinking that Theo might even want to say it.

Theo sighed, still fidgeting with his glass. “I don’t...I don’t know,” He said tiredly with an aborted shrug. It took him a second to talk again, gathering his thoughts. “Tracy and I met when we were twenty-two, and we were good together in the beginning. I loved her more than anything,” Theo started, eyes downcast. “Then I...we got pregnant with Jack really fast, and my business hadn’t really taken off yet, so I had to start working more and more, but even after we were well-off, I didn’t stop. I left her at home with Jack too much and I wasn’t there for either of them, but she’s not mad about that. She’s mad that things just...fizzled out,” Theo said. “It had been a long time coming and we both knew that, but one day I came home from a trip and I saw her face and we both knew it was-” Theo cut himself off on a breath, taking a sip of something that wasn’t there. Liam felt his chest constrict. “We knew it was the end.”

“That’s not your fault,” Liam said in a low voice, itching to reach out for him, but he kept his hands firmly planted on the desk behind him. Theo shook his head.

“No,” He said. “It feels bad because it  _ was _ my fault. It  _ is _ my fault, and I know it. I fucked up her life and screwed up Jack’s, and I can’t take that back now. Everything she says about me is right,” Theo said. “I know you’ve probably read the interview she did about me, and she’s  _ right _ . I wasn’t a good father and I wasn’t a good husband, because I fuck up every... _ goddamn _ thing I touch.” Theo exhaled sharply and clenched his jaw. There was a pained look on his face as he set his glass down on the desk next to Liam, and Liam’s lips parted with the sad feeling that had overtaken him. “There’s a  _ reason _ that Tracy talks to me like that, and I deserve it. There’s a  _ reason _ Jack doesn’t like me, and I deserve that too. There’s a  _ reason _ that you  _ hate _ me.” 

Liam felt like all the wind had been knocked out of him.

There was a beat of silence between them as Theo breathed heavily, staring at his empty glass. 

Liam’s voice was caught, but he managed to get the words out. “I don’t hate you,” Liam said seriously. Theo’s eyes snapped to his. “I haven’t hated you for a  _ long _ time. Believe me, I  _ wanted _ to,” He amended. “But I  _ don’t _ . You know why?”

Theo didn’t ask, but he looked at Liam, stunned and frozen. 

“You’re not just Theo Raeken, president of his company. You’re  _ Theo _ . You go to normal-people bars and restaurants because you want to remember what things were like before you were rich for a night. You email me pictures of cats while we’re working, and you come back to your house, no matter how big, and unwind with your sleeves up and tie off.” Liam looked at him seriously, no longer nervous to speak to him at all. “You’re  _ Theo _ , and you’re a father who  _ wants _ and  _ tries _ to do better even if he’s screwed up in the past, and that’s a  _ lot _ more than I can say for some fathers that I know. Your son leans into you when you’re together,” Liam remembered. “He feels safe with you. He doesn’t  _ hate _ you, and neither do I,” Liam told him, thanking some higher power that Theo was able to listen to him. “I don’t know what idiot could  _ really _ hate you.”

In the few seconds that Theo stared at him, things started to fall into place for Liam in a way he didn’t expect them to. When he looked into Theo’s eyes, determined and desperate not to break contact, what he saw there wasn’t only vulnerability - there was something else that he couldn’t name, but he knew what it meant all the same.  _ Oh _ . His heart dropped into his stomach as Theo stepped close to him. “You really mean that?” Theo asked, his voice on the edge of a whisper.

Liam nodded as one of Theo’s hands came to rest by Liam’s thigh on the desk. Scratch what Liam had thought last week about that being as close to Theo, because now, all he could see was him. Still, he nodded and swallowed, keeping his eyes fixed on Theo’s no matter how much they wanted to drop and get a close look at the cupid’s bow of Theo’s lips. 

“I do,” He whispered hoarsely. 

The second that passed felt like an eternity as Theo looked him over, placing his other hand on the other side of Liam so he was effectively caged in. 

Liam felt his heart start to pound even before Theo dipped into kiss him, but as soon as Theo’s lips hit his, sensation ran up his spine alarmingly fast. The sweet, soft kiss was intoxicating because it was Theo, and his doubts began to fly out the window as Theo’s mouth moved testingly but firmly against his. 

Theo pulled back and Liam realized how much the arms holding himself up were shaking, Theo having reduced him to nothing more than jelly. Theo’s eyes roved over his face, settling on his mouth as Liam tried to breathe. “ _ I- _ ” Liam choked out, managing to meet Theo’s eyes despite every cell in his body screaming at him to do something else. “I shouldn’t...this is…” Liam shut his mouth, gulping and shutting his eyes. This was Theo, who sent cat pictures and went to normal-people bars, but he was also involved with his job, and the father of one of his students.  _ It was wrong to do this, it was…  _

“Yeah?” Theo whispered, but he sounded entirely unconcerned. Theo knew he already had him hooked, and he couldn’t be more right. Liam shuddered, the sound of Theo’s voice going directly south. “You shouldn’t  _ what _ ?”

Theo’s breath, smelling like whiskey and mint, hit Liam’s lips and Liam was  _ gone _ . All his inhibitions left in a single groan as he reached up to grab both sides of Theo’s head and tug him down hard, and Theo didn’t leave any room for Liam to change his mind. Liam kissed him like he was dying for it, and he  _ was _ . In that moment, he couldn’t remember a time where he  _ wasn’t _ kissing Theo. 

It was all teeth and tongue and bitten lips and the mind-shattering grip that Theo’s large hands had on his hips, and Liam was drowning in it. All he could bring himself to do was try not to get swept under, and Theo was holding him just on the edge. 

His hands moved from Liam’s hips to fumble with the tucked-in edge of Liam’s shirt, groaning into his mouth when he struggled to get his hands underneath. Liam gasped at feeling the heat coming from Theo’s hands on his abs, and if how much more desperately Theo started to kiss him was anything to go by, he needed this just as much. Liam shuddered and shook as he felt Theo’s fingers trail towards the small of his back and Theo’s strong arms pulled him forward so he was sliding almost all the way off the edge of the desk.

They broke away and Liam whimpered, Theo’s lips immediately attaching to the skin under Liam’s ear. “ _ God _ , I want you,” Theo rasped into the skin of his neck, and Liam bit his lip so hard he started to taste blood. No one had ever gotten him hot like this, let alone their voice being this intoxicating. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

Liam could barely register what Theo was saying over the heat that was threatening to burn him alive, but he snaked a hand into Theo’s hair and nodded frantically as Theo sucked and bit at his neck. Hickeys were so juvenile that even some of his  _ students _ thought they were stupid, but all LIam could think about was Theo marking him up, staking his claim. There wasn’t any time to question where all of this was coming from; he just needed it to happen. 

A quiet moan slipped past Liam’s lips as Theo bit down especially hard. That seemed to set Theo off, because their lips came together again and Liam got no warning before he was being lifted off the table by ridiculously strong arms. He wrapped his legs around Theo’s waist and held on tightly as Theo carried him, relishing every place their bodies were touching, even if they hadn’t even gotten their clothes off.

He mewled as his back hit the wall by the door, and Theo was eating it right up. “You’re so beautiful,” He whispered on a hot breath into Liam’s ear, and Liam’s head fell back against the wall. “So,  _ so _ beautiful for me.”

“ _ Theo _ ,” Liam whined as Theo toyed with the buttons on Liam’s shirt. He was starting to regret not starting the process earlier like Theo had. “ _ Theo… _ ”

Theo grinned darkly against Liam’s skin between kisses. “You want me to take you to bed, baby? Is that it?” He breathed. Liam had never been one for pet names before, but he was convinced that he’d let Theo call him anything and let Theo  _ do _ anything to him. He nodded quickly again, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth. “ _ Words _ , baby,” Theo chided softly, sounding wrecked, but not nearly as badly as Liam was.

“Yes,” He cried, wrapping his arms around Theo’s neck and pulling him in for the harsh kiss he knew he’d be addicted to now. “ _ Please _ .”

Theo smiled one last time against his lips as he lifted him off the wall, and Liam buried his head in the space between Theo’s neck and shoulder as they started to move.

It was a miracle that Theo didn’t drop him when they went up the big staircase to the second floor, but Liam wasn’t thinking of that at all by the time they reached Theo’s bedroom. The only thing he thought of as he was manhandled into the middle of a king-sized bed was Theo, Theo, and Theo again.

All of his doubts and worries were left outside as Theo kicked the door shut behind him and prowled over to where Liam was waiting. /span>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, they fucked.  
> FINALLY.
> 
> I guess you guys can tell why this took so long to write, hm? There was a lot to get done ;)  
> I'm not updating the rating or the tags until the next chapter is out so that I wouldn't spoil you guys before you read it ;)
> 
> I'm not sure what else to say about this one, so let me know what you think in the comments!!!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	8. The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam wakes up in a big, fancy canopy bed that can only belong to one person, and Theo and Liam put their communication skills to use for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags and rating have been updated for chapter seven :)

When Liam blinked himself awake a few hours later, the first thing he saw was the darkened chandelier on the ceiling, sharp shiny lines muted by the canopy over the bed. It took him a few seconds to register why he was somewhere so unfamiliar. For a while, he stared up at the ceiling with his arm still thrown behind his head and under a pillow, one knee pointing up as he laid on his back. 

Pieces only started to come together once he realized what this kind of bedroom meant. Only one person Liam knew had a chandelier in their bedroom, since only one person he knew was  _ rich _ enough to. Sure enough, when he slowly turned his head, he saw Theo there, his lips parted gently in his sleep. He almost wanted to laugh. Of  _ course _ Theo managed to look that good when he was asleep, a picture of peacefulness and the softer part of sex against black sheets.

All he could do was stay as still as he could to not wake him up, so he kept his eyes on what he could see of the room. Theo’s bed was draped in an almost-opaque white curtain, which started to bring back the memories of the night before. Liam smiled to himself blearily. He now could say with the utmost confidence that you’d never  _ really _ had sex until you’ve fucked in a huge, comfy canopy bed.

Glancing over at Theo again though, Liam’s prior opinion that Theo could do anything to him still stood. The canopy bed was just a bonus; Theo could have fucked him on the  _ floor _ and Liam knew he still would have loved it. The things Theo could do with his body and make Liam feel were unbelievable, but he knew he’d barely gotten the tip of the iceberg of all Theo could’ve done. 

That wasn’t to say he was complaining. Bits and pieces of the twist of their bodies were coming back to him the longer he laid there. He could remember the feeling of hot skin against his, the sound of Theo’s breath in his ear as he went hard with Liam on his back, and the unrepeatable things Theo whispered between gasps.  _ Beautiful, fuck, baby, yes _ had spilled from Theo’s lips like it was his first language as he drove Liam higher and higher. Liam being Liam, who wasn’t nearly as smooth as Theo on a good day, was pretty sure he hadn’t been able to get out anything more than incoherent noises the whole time, but Theo hadn’t seemed to mind.

Liam reached up with one hand and felt the sensitive spots on his neck that he remembered basically begging for. He bit his lip through a smile as two of his fingers traced over the bruises that were probably an angry shade of purple based on the way they hurt, knowing that they weren’t only on his neck, they were all over him. There were some on his collarbones and chest, and even better, the insides of his thighs.

Liam was a good looking guy. He preferred tight clothes and had a nice face, so he attracted attention, and he had a  _ lot _ of sex. Still, he was completely convinced that he’d never had sex like  _ that _ before. He was about ready to dismiss any other sexual encounter before last night and reclaim his virginity for Theo to have taken, because as far as he was concerned, none of his ex-boyfriends or end-of-the-night flings could compare. Nobody had ever worshipped his body the way Theo had; no one had ever made him feel as good and  _ wanted _ as he did.

He briefly forgot that he was supposed to be being quiet and he shivered, making Theo stir next to him. He cursed both himself for being so obvious about everything and Theo for being such a light sleeper.

Theo rolled onto his side, his eyelids fluttering and squeezing shut before they opened. Liam saw just a sliver of his green eyes before he shut them again, but they opened a half second later as a sleepy smile came onto his lips. “Hi…” Theo said, his voice raspy from being asleep. 

Liam sat up a little in bed on his hands, and Theo propped his head up with his elbow on the mattress. He could tell Theo couldn’t see him too well in the dark, but the early-morning moonlight coming from the window over the bed was enough for Liam to see the shininess in Theo’s eyes. It took his breath away.  _ Had Theo always looked at him like that?  _

“Hi…” Liam said back, clearing his throat as quietly as he could. Theo didn’t even blink at the noise. Instead, his lips even spread into a bigger smile, soft and sleepy without teeth. Liam wanted to kiss it off. 

Still, he didn’t want to assume anything, so he leaned over to look over Theo’s body, trying to get a glimpse of the alarm clock on his bedside table -  _ 3:57 _ . “Oh, it’s early,” Liam mumbled, rubbing the heaviness out of his eyes with one hand. “I’m supposed to get up for two hours, I promised my boss I’d be there today for a workshop.”

He held the covers over his lower half as he searched around blindly for the clothes that had been tossed carelessly on the floor the night before. He found his boxers first, so he pulled them on, ignoring the soreness in his legs. Behind him, Theo rolled over to turn his lamp on, filling the room with dim but warm light that bounced perfectly off the angles of his face. 

Liam could tell Theo was watching him as he worked to get the buttons on his shirt up again, but he was focused on keeping it together before letting himself fall back into Theo like he wanted to. He was afraid that if he touched Theo too much while both of them were still naked, he might not make it out of there in time - or at all. He was halfway through the buttons on his shirt, perched on the edge of Theo’s mattress, when Theo spoke up.

“You could stay,” Theo suggested slyly. Liam smirked to himself; he could hear the smile in Theo’s voice. “Just for a few more hours?”

“I really can’t,” Liam sighed, making it known that he wanted to. God, he wanted to. He wasn’t looking forward to listening to Mrs. Martin try to tell him she knew how to use a computer better than him all morning.

Theo sat up and scooted over so he was behind Liam, and Liam bit his lip, already giddy at the proximity. “You could,” He argued softly. “We could go back to sleep for a few more hours or do... _ other _ things,” Theo said, running a finger over Liam’s collarbone. Liam reached up to softly swat him away, but it turned into him covering Theo’s hand with his own. “I’d make you breakfast. I’ve been told that my pancakes are  _ godlike _ .” Liam grinned as Theo began to kiss up and down his neck, softly enough not to hurt the bruises he’d left behind, but firm enough to make Liam feel warm all over. Liam closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He was ensconced in the fairytale; Liam had never in a million years thought people like Theo and mornings like these really existed. “And I’d drive you to work.”

And just like that, the fairytale was shattered. As soon as Theo said the word “work,” his stomach dropped and a wave of worry hit him like a rough breaker at the beach, the kind that knocked you over if you weren’t careful.  _ Work _ . Fuck,  _ work _ , the one thing that was supposed to have been holding them back from this. Liam’s head snapped up and his entire body tensed, and Theo moved back in surprise, his eyebrows raised. 

“No, I-” Liam cut off, rushing to button the rest of his shirt up. “I should go see my roommates, they’re probably wondering where I am,” Liam lied under his breath, but he knew as it came out that it wasn’t convincing. He reached around quickly for his pants on the floor, ignoring that the buttons on his shirt weren’t lined up.

“Liam-?” Theo asked, sounding a lot more awake than he’d been a second ago with the concern seeping into his voice. “Hey, what’s-?”

The panic running through Liam’s body didn’t take long to burst out. “W-we can’t tell  _ anyone _ about this,” He blurted out, too anxious to wonder how bad it must sound. “I mean it, we can’t tell anyone. I-I could get fired, or at the very least lose every  _ bit _ of respect I’ve got at that school-”

“ _ Okay _ ,” Theo soothed, but Liam was still shaking his head.

“I’m  _ twenty-six _ , nobody respects me there anyway, and if they find out that I slept with a  _ donor- _ ”

Theo put his hands on Liam’s shoulders as he struggled to get his pants back on. “Liam, hey,” He breathed, trying to get Liam to look at him. “ _ Liam _ ,” Theo tried again, but it still took a second for Liam to calm down enough to look at his face. “It’s okay, I get it,” Theo said gently, one of his thumbs rubbing Liam’s shoulder. “We won’t tell anyone. I won’t drive you to work,” He amended, although he did seem kind of disappointed by it. Liam looked at him nervously, still unsure if he really meant it, but all he saw was genuity in his eyes. 

Instead of kissing him like he wanted to, Liam buttoned his pants and pulled his socks and shoes on quickly. He didn’t know what else to say, so he thought it would be best if he left before things got any worse. As soon as he was dressed well-enough, minus the screwed up-buttons and one inside-out sock, he got up off Theo’s bed with a shaky breath and headed towards the door.

“Hey,” Theo called out softly, still sitting up with the blankets pooled around him. He was still angled towards where Liam had been sitting a second before, and the image made Liam’s chest hurt. Liam’s hand paused on the doorknob. “I’m gonna see you again after this, right?” He asked, afraid that Liam was going to walk out the door and never come back.

And as easy as that might be, Liam knew he would never, not even if he wanted to. He wouldn’t even be able to. “...Yeah,” He said. Theo smiled softly, some of the nervous tension leaving his body. Theo was still sitting up as he opened the door and left.

He went downstairs to grab his phone and his bag that he’d left in the study, and after that, he slipped out of Theo’s home with a deep breath of cold air and a million different thoughts running through his head.

+++

The drive back to his house was quiet, contemplative. His phone was connected by bluetooth, so he still had the volume on an  _ Arcade Fire _ album down as he drove, but other than that, his head felt like white noise as he tried to comprehend what he was going to do next.

It felt like he hadn’t been home in years by the time he unlocked the front door. As soon as he saw Mason, awake and sitting on the couch, he at least had the decency to feel a little guilty for not texting in the back of his mind. Nolan and Corey let him do what he wanted, but usually Mason would want to know where he was. “Hey,” Mason said instead.

“You’re up early,” Liam commented shakily, shutting the door and putting his bag on the floor.

“Late, actually,” Mason said. “Corey and I were celebrating Nolan finally sleeping with a guy, and I didn’t feel like going back to sleep after that. We had pizza,” He said. “Where were you?”

Liam swallowed, his knees a little shaky. “Um. Sleeping with a guy,” He said. He knew his roommates wouldn’t ever snitch on him, so he felt safe enough telling them. 

Mason raised an eyebrow, his interest piqued. “You were sleeping with a guy after parent-teacher conferences?” He asked, amusement creeping into his voice. Liam nodded, chewing on his already abused bottom lip.

“Yep,” He said shortly, still trying to get a grasp on what had happened. The longer he was awake, the less it felt like it was real.

“So does that mean you and Theo finally got it on?” Mason asked.

“Yep.”

Mason was trying not to laugh at him, Liam could tell. “...Well, was it  _ good?” _

Liam’s thousand-yard stare remained unbroken as he half-leaned against the door.  _ “Yep.” _

Mason grinned. “Okay, I’m gonna let you go to sleep,” He said, obviously knowing Liam wasn’t going to be able to talk. “You’re gonna tell me more later, though.”

Liam nodded dumbly as he trudged off towards his room, taking the opportunity to leave with ease. 

He went into his room and took his clothes out for his workshop that he needed to go to in just a few hours, but he crawled into bed without taking his old clothes off. It wasn’t like he was sleeping anyway; all he could do was lay on his side and stay awake, trying to figure out what the  _ hell _ his next move was going to have to be.

+++

The conclusion that Liam came to was that there  _ was _ no conclusion. He was still confused and overwhelmed when he had to get up and drag his ass to the school on Saturday morning. The rest of his morning hadn’t gone too great, either; he’d burnt his bagel in the toaster because he zoned out and accidentally toasted it twice, forgetting that he had toasted it the first time, so he ended up skipping breakfast. He also put on two different shoes without noticing until he was just about to walk out, and even though he changed his shirt, he buttoned it up wrong again.  _ Twice _ . It was hard  _ enough _ trying to hide all of the marks Theo had given him to begin with, since the guy was apparently some vampire with how many he gave him, so getting dressed was a lot harder than it had needed it to be. 

Of course, none of his roommates were in a particularly helpful mood. Corey was using his Saturday morning to sleep like a normal person and Mason was staying out of Liam’s way until he wanted to talk, but Nolan was the worst. He was obviously ignoring how completely out of it Liam was, and was even trying to joke with him in typical Nolan-manner. He’d taken one look at the hickies on Liam’s neck and his eyes had gone wide with all of the things he wanted to say. As he’d walked around the kitchen burning his breakfast, Nolan was clapping him on the shoulders and congratulating them both on their lays. “Looks like we  _ both _ got lucky last night,” Nolan said in some variety every few minutes, still on his high of sleeping with Alec. Liam’s high had just happened to fade out earlier that morning in Theo’s bed.

So he was at work, sitting in the computer lab with a few other teachers and his boss, hungry from a skipped breakfast and tired from waking up at four in the morning. In Liam’s honest opinion, they really didn’t need to be doing a workshop on this subject. Google Classroom was a single app, and Liam had figured out how to use it months back simply because he was bored. Still, since Liam was a new teacher and his lack of seniority screwed him over once again, Mrs. Martin had specifically told him he had to be there to go through training.

She stood at the front of the computer lab, pointing to things on the projected image on the wall, and taught them (incorrectly, might he add) how to set up their classes using their students’ emails. Liam was done in about five minutes and helped Artie, who was an older English teacher and barely understood how to use the internet, instead. He rubbed his head as a headache was coming on from the bright lights and empty stomach. 

“You alright there, son?” Artie asked as Liam helped him out of the entirely wrong tab he’d opened up and his stomach growled.

“Yeah, just skipped breakfast, I was in a rush,” Liam waved off, deciding not to tell Artie about the toaster. The thing about older people was that even if they couldn’t use the internet, they always thought they knew better, and Artie would continuously offer to help Liam learn how to operate a toaster whenever he saw him if he told him. 

Once Artie had one of his classes set up and seemed to have a decent understanding of how to do the other ones, Liam leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. His cheeks puffed out on a sigh and his hands came to rub the back of his head tiredly. 

As always, his thoughts drifted back to Theo just as they’d been doing all morning. He’d been trying to push it all away, but now that he was stuck in a room where the only sounds were mice clicking and breathing, it was unavoidable. This time, Liam was remembering their first kiss. God, their _ first kiss. _ That sounded so minor compared to everything else, so much that he’d almost forgotten about it. Everything had just gone so fast - they went from talking to kissing to sex in only a few minutes, so the first hesitant kiss had fallen to the back of the line of priorities.

He thought it over more, letting things be simple for a second. The kiss had felt good, felt  _ right _ . If it  _ hadn’t _ felt so good, he may have even pushed Theo away like he knew in the moment that he should’ve, but then again, maybe not. He was incredibly conflicted about everything he was thinking about. On one hand, the kiss was good, but his job was involved. Then there was the issue of what happened after the kiss, after  _ everything _ .

If Theo wanted him to stay around, and it was becoming pretty apparent that he did, that would be a whole different issue. Liam knew he shouldn’t. Theo was the father of one of his students, and like he’d told Theo, if any of his coworkers found out he was  _ sleeping _ with a major donor to the school, he’d lose a ton of respect. Maybe  _ dating _ a major donor wasn’t as bad, but people had never exactly had much hesitation to poke fun at Liam any other time because he was young and would take it. He knew Mr. Spencer, the conservative gym teacher Liam had been trying not to fight the entire time he’d worked there, would have a fucking ball game with that if he ever found out.

But then again, Theo had looked at him early that morning like he was  _ everything _ , and it made his heart clench, because he found that he  _ wanted _ Theo to look at him like that  _ all _ the time. He wanted to take Theo up on that offer for sleeping in and morning sex, and let Theo cook him the ‘godlike’ pancakes he promised. Things were just overwhelming right now, and he needed to take a step back and look at it all, but what Liam wanted versus what he was  _ supposed _ to do wasn’t making it easy. 

He hadn’t realized he’d shut his eyes to the world as he thought, so he was in for a rude surprise when he heard the tap of Mrs. Martin’s nails on his computer desk. “You have your classes set up already, Mr. Dunbar?” She asked. Liam nodded and motioned to his screen to show her, but she grabbed his computer mouse to check everything herself as if he was incompetent. “Okay…” She murmured, clicking through his setup. Her eyes remained fixed on Liam’s screen as she started talking to him. “So, I noticed some activity in your email account,” She commented casually, but Liam still felt his heartbeat jump. His anxiety had him wondering in the moment if he’d accidentally signed up for a porn subscription with his email or something, despite the fact that Liam hadn’t even watched porn in weeks. 

“C-could you elaborate on that?” He asked politely.

“I’ve seen that you have a lot of incoming and outgoing emails with Theo Raeken,” Mrs. Martin said. “The same man that I told you pretty  _ clearly _ that you shouldn’t question.”

Liam swallowed nervously. He’d never actually told her about what he and Theo had been doing, much less about how the “apology” meeting had turned out. “He actually ended up agreeing with me on some things,” Liam explained as carefully as he could. He felt like he’d set off a landmine if he said something wrong. “We’ve been meeting to discuss Jack in a way that doesn’t interfere with either of our schedules, about once every two weeks or more.”

Mrs. Martin smiled, but it was anything but warm. “And that’s all well and good,” She started. “But remember who you’re talking to and what’s at stake here. You can walk the line if you want to, but just remember that you’re on thin ice.”

Hearing that did nothing to calm Liam’s nerves, and it made him even more anxious considering that he’d woken up naked next to the same man she was talking about not even twelve hours ago. She clicked into his email tab, which was still open. “Oh look,” She said, fake-excitedly. “You’ve got another one.”

Liam tensed as she clicked on the email for him.

_ TO:  _ [ _ dunbar@bhhs.com _ _   
_ ](mailto:dunbar@bhhs.com) _ FROM:  _ [ _ traeken@raekenresorts.net _ _   
_ ](mailto:traeken@raekenresorts.net) _ SUBJECT: [no subject] _

_ _

_ Are you free tonight to meet? Maybe after 6? _

At least Theo had the thought to keep things simple and not explicitly tell him what the meeting was for. As ominous as it was,  _ vague _ was definitely better than exposing their secret on the literal first day of it in front of Liam’s boss. 

Mrs. Martin raised an eyebrow at the cat, but Liam shrugged it off. “We’re kind of friends,” He said, not all unhonestly, and luckily, she brushed it off. Her patience for Liam was clearly wearing thin. 

_ “Thin ice,” _ She repeated coldly as she walked off.

Liam sat back in his seat and sighed with relief when she went to go check in with somebody else. He was definitely going to have to give Theo his phone number now.

+++

Liam ate some of the pasta that Corey had, as always, made too much of, and collapsed into bed for a nap when he got home, but he was getting back up by five-thirty. His roommates (and Alec) looked at him curiously when they saw that he was heading out again, since they’d all been commenting about how alike to a slug he was acting around the house that day. 

He felt all eyes on him from the couch as he walked towards the front door. “What?” He asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Mason sing-songed. Corey and Alec smirked and Nolan mimed sex with his hands, making Liam roll his eyes. Of course this couldn’t stay confined to just Mason, the snitch. “So, does going over to Theo’s house mean we’re going to get some kind of update?” 

“Who says I’m going to Theo’s house?” Liam scoffed, but he was too flustered to lie right. All three of them looked at him, unconvinced, and he sighed. “Look, I have as little of an idea about what’s going on as you guys do, so I’m just going over to figure it out, okay?”

“And that has nothing to do with you wanting to replace all those impressive but kind of concerning hickies?” Alec asked.

Liam narrowed his eyes. “You don’t even  _ live _ here, you have no right to start with me right now.” Liam’s bitterness made them laugh.

_ “Okaaay,” _ Nolan drew-out teasingly, scratching his own neck to tease Liam about the hickies even more. “Good luck. But really, be careful. Did you know someone’s died from getting hickies? I don’t want you to become the next neck-sucking casualty.”

“Goodbye!” Liam shouted over him as he shut the front door. He rolled his eyes to himself before setting off.

+++

His heart had been racing the entire way over to Theo’s house, and he got to the front door to find that he didn’t even have to knock. Theo was just there, waiting for him to come over, and Liam was glad. If he had had anymore time to wait, he would’ve started overthinking more, but when he saw Theo, all that washed over him was a wave of relief that he wasn’t expecting. After an entire day of worrying about him, Liam didn’t think he’d want to fall into Theo’s arms the second he saw him.

There had been a decision to be made, one that he’d been debating all day, but his choice was currently being made by itself.

Theo gave a toothless smile when he saw Liam, and Liam wasn’t strong enough to deny that it made his knees feel a little weak. 

_ How was he supposed to just leave this? _

“Hi,” Theo said softly, stepping into the house so Liam could come in. Liam grinned at him a little nervously as he followed. 

Suddenly, standing in Theo’s foyer wasn’t the same. It looked so much different, felt so much different, now that Theo was standing right next to him, personal space be damned. “How have you been?” Theo asked. He could tell they both thought it was a weird question, since Liam had just been here.

“Good,” Liam replied sort of airily, still trying to get a grasp on where he was and who he was with. It all didn’t seem real, and Theo’s fingers brushing his while their arms were down by their sides weren’t helping. “My, uh, my boss saw your email this morning,” He said. Theo sucked in a breath. “I should probably give you my phone number.”

“Yeah, that’s probably better,” Theo said with a wince. “At least I didn’t mention...y’know,” He said, giving Liam his phone to put his number into. Liam was weirdly nervous about it, trying as hard as he could not to drop Theo’s phone on the wood or put in his number wrong. He couldn’t remember ever feeling  _ this _ awkward. “Did she like the picture?” He asked a second later with a hint of humor.

One side of Liam’s mouth tipped up in a smile as he read his number over for the fifth time and decided it was definitely correct. He saved his name under ‘Liam’ and gave his phone back. “No, but I did,” Liam laughed. 

Theo looked at the contact Liam had saved himself under and promptly changed it just to ‘L,’ and Liam wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be cute or if it was supposed to be hiding his identity. Either way, it was thoughtful. “Well, that’s good, at least. Do you want anything to eat? It’s late,” Theo asked.

“No, I’m good, I ate when I got home from work,” Liam said. Theo seemed disappointed, his smile faltering for a second like he’d been looking forward to it.  _ Well, Liam hadn’t eaten THAT much pasta…  _ “...but if you had any snacks in mind, I guess I could eat,” He offered, and Theo’s eyes lit up. He nodded to a direction of the house Liam had never been in and guided him to the large kitchen.

Liam tried not to marvel at it too much as he followed Theo in, but it was probably the biggest kitchen Liam had ever seen. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised; everything Theo had was big.

(Not  _ that _ . Well, that too, but that’s not the point.)

Liam took one of the granola bars out of the large pantry Theo showed him and unwrapped it, feeling a little weird as he did so. He was standing in a kitchen where every appliance was too much for Liam to afford, next to a very attractive and very important man who’d bought all of those said kitchen appliances. There was no way for there not to be awkward tension in the air.

Theo seemed to sense Liam’s reluctance to speak first, because he got the memo and broke the silence for them. “Do you want to sit down? We can talk,” Theo suggested. Liam nodded, and Theo lead him through a different door to his living room. Liam was getting to see a lot of the Raeken house in these past two days. 

The living room was bigger than the study by a lot, but it was still decorated in dark wood, and despite what Liam had originally thought when he passed by the room before, there were actually a lot of personal touches. There were bookmarked books arranged on the shelves and even a glass of half-melted ice sitting on one of the end tables, showing that Theo didn’t actually spend  _ all  _ his time in the office or holed up in his study. 

They took a seat on a leather couch as Liam finished off the granola bar, which  _ also  _ tasted too expensive for Liam to ever have considered buying before - he’d be sure to look it up later just out of curiosity. 

Their knees were tilted together as they looked at each other. Theo rubbed his hands up and down his thighs in a move that looked almost kind of nervous, which was an unfamiliar look on him. Usually Liam was the one who was fidgeting. “So, we’re obviously not going to talk about Jack today,” Theo started, right to the point. “Unless you think there’s something that we  _ should _ , of course,” Theo added.

Liam couldn’t help but smile in amusement. “It’s Saturday, I don’t think he could’ve done anything that caused any problems in my classroom,” He said. Theo grinned and scratched the back of his head.

“Right, right. Well, I, uh...I thought that we should talk. A-about last night, of course, since we didn’t really have much time to.” Liam nodded in agreement. “So I was thinking that we could take some time for you to ask questions, y’know, about me. Anything you want to clear up, since I know you’re big on communication,” Theo explained, then went quiet, waiting for Liam to ask something, but he was taken aback by the chance. He hadn’t been expecting Theo to go all open-book on him all of the sudden, and with his luck, he’d somehow forgotten all ten billion questions Liam had been  _ fantasizing _ about asking. “...Like I said, anything’s on the table-” Theo said when Liam stayed quiet for a little too long to be normal.  _ God, what could he say…? _

“What’s your favorite color?” He blurted.  _ Fuck, why that one?  _ Liam cringed as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Theo raised his eyebrows, clearly not expecting that to be the first question either.

“What...?” He asked, surprised amusement creeping into his tone.

Liam groaned. “God,  _ fuck _ , that’s not important, I’m sorry-” He fumbled, trying to recover as he rubbed his head. “I’m just tired-”

“It’s green,” Theo said, cutting him off. That soft smile was back on his lips, the one that made Liam want to melt against his better judgement. 

“Oh,” Liam said quietly, feeling his cheeks burn up. Theo laughed quietly and gave Liam a moment. “Y’know, I do actually have a lot of questions. I don’t know why that one was the first one I thought of.” Liam sighed. “Okay...um, everything’s on the table?” He asked.

“Everything,” Theo agreed, not a hint of hesitation in his voice.

Something came to mind, but Liam still wasn’t sure even with Theo’s promises that he should ask it. The want to know outweighed the risk, and Liam braced himself for Theo to get mad. “Do you still have feelings for Tracy?” He asked. There had just been so much tension between them that he found it slightly hard to believe that there wasn’t any there.

Theo raised his eyebrows, taken aback, but rubbed his hands together to think anyway. “No, not anymore. I definitely did when we were in the process of getting divorced, and they came by here and there for the first year of being single, but...recently they’ve been completely gone,” Theo admitted. Liam tried not to think of the implications of the word ‘recently’ and made himself listen. “So, no, I don’t have feelings for Tracy. I still love her, but as the mother of my child. That’s it,” Theo assured. “Is that a good enough answer?”

“Yeah,” Liam said somewhat breathlessly. “Do you want to ask  _ me _ anything?” He asked. As much as he wanted to keep going, he also didn’t want to pry.

Theo shook his head. “I can ask you things later. This is about  _ you _ being comfortable, not me,” He said. One of his hands raised off the couch like he was going to reach out to touch Liam, but he put it back down before he could. Liam was slightly alarmed at how much Liam wished he would have just gone for it. The grounding touch of Theo’s hand on his knee or thigh seemed perfect right now, but then again, he still wasn’t even sure where this was actually going. “Come on, I know you’ve got more questions,” Theo encouraged.

Liam nodded, thinking over his next words carefully. “Have you...been with a guy before?” He asked next, which hadn’t been one of the questions he’d had before last night, but now he was really interested. “Don’t get me wrong, you seemed to  _ really _ know what you were doing, but…”

Theo did what was probably the cutest thing ever and blushed, one side of his mouth tilting into a smile as he ducked his head, but he still answered. “Yeah, in high school,” He said. “I had a boyfriend, nothing serious, but yeah. I don’t really advertise it, but I’m bi,” Theo said. “And you’ve been with a guy before? You’re-?”

“Gay,” Liam supplied, nodding. “I mean, I dated girls back in high school, but that didn’t really work out like I thought it would, obviously,” He rambled, wanting to kick himself for being so awkward. He was  _ not _ the same guy that had come into Theo’s office threatening him to try and get Liam fired, he  _ couldn’t _ be.

Theo listened to him, nodding as Liam explained things, however badly. “I probably should have known that before I made a move on you,” Theo admitted, cringing. “It would have been good information to have. I should’ve done that a lot smoother, or waited until a better time, at least,” He said.

As much as Liam knew that was true, he shook his head. “No, I’m glad you did,” He said. That was true, too.

He hadn’t realized how close they’d gotten as they were talking - their knees were now touching and their fingers could easily  _ ‘accidentally’  _ brush together where they were leaning on the couch. Theo gave a small, questioning smile. “Yeah?” He asked softly. His eyes flicked down to Liam’s lips in a way that made Liam’s heart stutter and brain stall.

All Liam could do was nod, in a trance from how close they were and how overwhelmingly badly he wanted this. “Yeah,” He said quietly.

He let Theo lean in and kiss him then, as if he had any other option. Theo’s hand was warm on the side of his face, holding him there like he was something precious, and Liam just barely stopped the shiver running down his spine from turning into a full-body shudder at how perfectly close Theo felt like to coming home. There was something  _ different _ about Theo that Liam would never be able to truly place.

Theo pulled back, but not far enough that their foreheads weren’t still touching, the tips of their noses brushing on accident. “I really do like you a lot,” Theo said, just over the volume of a whisper, and Liam took in a shaky breath. “I think I’ve liked you since you came in here and yelled at me, but I knew I did when you threatened to cough on me in the drugstore,” He said. Liam wanted to laugh, and paired with how dizzy he was feeling all of the sudden, he had to bite his lip to hide how big his smile was getting. “You don’t have to like me too,” Theo whispered. “I just thought you should know.”

Liam bit back his laugh of disbelief. “But I do,” He said without any hesitation.

“Even if you didn’t want to?” Theo asked jokingly, remembering what Liam had said about wanting to hate him the night before. Liam nodded against him.

“Yeah,” He admitted. “I didn’t know it yet, but one day I started smiling every time you emailed me. It was...unexpected,” Liam said. He itched to tilt his head just a little further and reattach their lips, but he wanted to get this out first. “But I like it.”

Theo grinned and leaned in, and their lips met again, this time without as much nervous energy as before. Theo gently bit at Liam’s lower lip and pulled him closer on the couch, his hand taking its rightful place on Liam’s cheek, and Liam didn’t think there was any place he’d rather be. As they kissed, Liam couldn’t believe that he’d ever hated this man. 

  
There was  _ no _ way he was getting out of this now; not when Theo felt just like a missing puzzle piece slotted right into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!
> 
> This chapter was originally going to have Jack in it, but when I was planning, I failed to realize that Liam wouldn't actually have to go to work, since it's a Saturday, so it got changed to Mrs. Martin instead. I know that workshops don't usually take place on weekends either, or at school, for one thing, but I took some creative liberties with that one.   
> Also, I don't like Liam's boss, but canon Natalie Martin was a little scary to her students so I'm thinking she'd be the same with her younger employees :/ rude.
> 
> I know that a lot of people (and I'm guilty of this myself sometimes) will get into a fic but only stick around until their ship gets together. I understand that, but I do hope you choose to stick around - there's so much more that'll happen, I promise. Just because our boys are together, that doesn't mean it's all sunshine and rainbows from here ;)
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments!!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	9. Spoiled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theo shows his affectionate side. Liam gets used to dating Theo and meets up with an old friend.

Liam had never been in the habit of admitting that things were going good - he always believed that he would jinx himself if he did - but he was starting to feel confident enough about it when it came to Theo.

Theo and Liam fell into their relationship almost effortlessly, even if there were definitely a few bumps along the way. On top of his work schedule, Liam was now balancing the times he could see Theo. It was a lot harder to sneak around than he thought it would be, having to remember all the specific dates and weekends that Jack would be out of the house, but he and Theo were managing it well enough. Theo always reminded him whenever they had the house to themselves, and Liam took just about every chance whenever he could evade Jack’s notice.

Speaking of Jack, Liam had almost had a heart attack the first time he saw him after that first weekend with Theo. He’d been worried about it, but none of his overthinking and nightmares had been enough to prepare him for  _ actually _ seeing Jack’s face in his class on Monday morning. He’d been taking attendance and absently said Jack’s name, but it was when he saw Jack raise his hand that he completely clammed up. The son of Theo,  _ Theo _ , who Liam had slept with  _ multiple _ times since they last saw each other, was actually  _ there in his classroom _ and Liam was supposed to teach him like nothing was going on.

Jack had looked at him skeptically when Liam floundered like an idiot, but luckily, he’d brushed it off. Jack probably just thought that Mr. Dunbar was just being a spaz as usual. Liam was for once grateful of his overall awkwardness, since it saved him there. He still collapsed into Theo’s arms with a groan the next time he saw him and vented about it, though.

But luckily, after the first one or two weeks, things started to get better. Besides the stress, sneaking around was actually kind of sexy when Liam thought about it, and he began to get used to having to see Jack in class every day. He didn’t seem to suspect anything, and Liam was good with that.

Other than the occasional blunders on Liam’s part, things with Theo were going good.

It was just so  _ easy _ to be with Theo in a way Liam would have never expected. He’d known from the first night that Theo was different in terms of sex, but he was something entirely new when it came to relationships, as well. Liam had never felt so  _ secure _ anywhere, and not just because Theo was a lot more well-off than his exes.

Liam noted that he never had to guess when it came to Theo. Back when he was with other people, Liam was always second-guessing himself and what his partners were thinking. He’d constantly worry that they didn’t like him anymore or that he was being too clingy, as he’d been told many times before, but with Theo, he didn’t have to worry.

Theo enjoyed Liam’s company a lot more than Liam thought he would, and he was clear about it, too. Theo was just as clingy as Liam, if not more, which was a pleasant surprise. He’d always be reaching for Liam’s hand whenever they were walking anywhere, even though they were only ever in Theo’s house or yard, and whenever they were sitting, their thighs would end up pressed together. There was always some kind of contact, and Liam lived for that.

Liam had also found out pretty early on in their relationship that Theo was a cuddler. Liam always came into his house and was greeted with a tight hug and a warm kiss, and after that, they’d end up on the couch or in bed just laying together for at least an hour. He guessed that shouldn’t have been so surprising - those arms and thighs were  _ made _ for it, after all. “Why didn’t I know you were a cuddler sooner?” Liam had asked once while laying on Theo’s chest.

Theo had smiled up at the ceiling. “We’d just had sex for the first time,” He said. “I figured it would’ve been a  _ little _ awkward if you woke up to me smothering you if you thought this was only going to be a one-night stand.”

After that, Theo had taken to wrapping his arms around Liam whenever he could.

Just like they were now. 

They’d ended up back in Theo’s study again, since it was technically their night to discuss Jack. Their meetings were still professional, but instead of sitting at Theo’s desk, they ended up on the couch. That night, Liam was laying on his back against Theo’s chest, Theo’s thighs bracketing Liam’s hips. Liam played with Theo’s fingers as they looked up at the ceiling of the study. 

“Jack did something interesting today,” Liam said, almost having forgotten about it. He felt Theo shift under him. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He volunteered for the end-of-the-year showcase,” He said.

“Oh?” Theo asked, sounding impressed.  _ ‘Volunteering’ _ and  _ ‘Jack’ _ weren’t usually words that went together. “What’s the showcase about?”

Liam grinned, remembering when he had done the showcase in his sophomore year. “Okay, so when I was in history class at Beacon Hills, my teacher gave us the option to do a project for extra credit on any historical event we wanted. I, and don’t ask me why, since I don’t know, did my project on Nixon’s impeachment.” Theo snickered underneath him, and Liam poked him in the ribs. “Anyway, he’d make it a whole big thing. I know it pissed every other teacher off, but he’d arrange for the other history classes to skip their last period and come look at our projects. We set them up in the cafeteria and presented them to everyone on one of the last days before exams. It was really fun, and I got to skip math class for a day,” Liam explained. “I heard Jack talking to Cass about doing his about the Vietnam War.”

Theo nodded. “That does sound cool,” He said. “Even if it doesn’t sound like a  _ Jack _ thing to do. You said you picked this up from your own history teacher?”

Liam hid a smile. He hadn’t talked about Mr. Philips in a long time, since most of the people he knew had already heard the story. He turned over, apologizing as he accidentally elbowed Theo in the ribs, and Theo helped him shift so that he was laying with his head on Theo’s chest. Now they could look at each other when they talked. 

“Yeah. I had this great teacher when I was in sophomore year, Mr. Philips,” Liam started wistfully. “He was awesome, but not in the type of way you’d think. He’s a sarcastic, dry-humor type of guy, and he didn’t deal with bullshit at all.”

“And you  _ liked _ this guy?” Theo asked jokingly. Liam rolled his eyes and ignored Theo’s snicker. 

“Well, no, not at  _ first _ ,” Liam admitted. “But I wasn’t always the best student, either. When I was sixteen…” Liam trailed off, wondering if he should even be sharing all of this. He didn’t want to dump this all on Theo just because he asked a simple question. Theo looked down at him, curious as to why he stopped talking. It gave Liam the courage to keep going. “Well, my dad was still in the picture when I was sixteen, but he was on his way out. He fought with my mom a lot, and...he loved me, don’t get that wrong. I was his son, and he’d always love me as a son, but...he didn’t  _ like _ me, if that makes sense,” Liam said. It still hurt a little bit to talk about, but in ten years, he’d had the wound pressed on many times. It felt more like a soft scar now. Theo didn’t say anything, but his arms wrapped around him tighter. “Like, he’d take me to the doctor and drive me to school, but he was never really in any rush to play a game of catch in the yard like the neighbors and their dads did, y’know?”

Theo took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” He said tightly. He obviously wanted to say more, probably something a lot harsher as he tended to do, but he held himself back. 

Liam shrugged. “Anyway, it affected me. I wasn’t really into doing the whole  _ school _ thing at that age, and Mr. Philips was just the only guy who ever really cared to help me with it. He basically told me that if I didn’t get my shit together, I wasn’t ever going to go anywhere, but he actually  _ helped _ me get it all together. He was the only one who tried to question why I was doing so badly.” Liam felt Theo take a breath of realization underneath him. “Without him, I wouldn’t have graduated high school or gone into teaching. In fact, I’m pretty sure he retired  _ just _ so that I could get his teaching position as soon as he left,” Liam laughed. “He changed my life, and that’s...that’s why I wanted to help Jack so much, and I got mad when you almost didn’t let me,” Liam breathed. “Wait, that’s not me trying to compare you to  _ my _ father, you’re  _ not- _ ”

“No, I get it,” Theo cut him off softly, nodding. Liam looked up at him with a cautious smile, but Theo just leaned down and kissed it off. “For the record, I’m glad you did step in.”

Liam smiled, nuzzling into Theo’s chest. A few minutes of silence and thinking later, Liam spoke up again. “Well, what were  _ you _ doing when you were sixteen? Already plotting world domination?”

Theo sighed almost dreamily. “I’m pretty sure I was working at the grocery store on East Avenue,” He remembered. “Sometimes my boss would pretend she didn’t see me stealing some canned stuff for dinners those nights.”

Liam blinked up at him questioningly, his lips parted. Theo smiled at him sadly and ran his fingers through Liam’s hair. “Theo, were you-?”

“Homeless?” Theo finished, then nodded. Liam felt like all the air had been knocked out of him, but Theo’s wounds had obviously also scarred over. “My parents wanted to leave after my sister died, and I didn’t want to go, so I lived in my truck. Haven’t seen them since,” He said like it was nothing, but Liam could tell that he’d spent time agonizing over it many times before. Theo leaned down and kissed Liam’s forehead. “It’s okay. I’m onto better things now,” He said, and that was the end of it.

+++

As Liam passed back papers, Jack’s eyes landed on Liam’s wrist while he reached over Cass to hand an essay back to him. His gaze settled on the watch that Liam had gotten just a day before, and Liam watched with a spike of anxiety as his expression changed from shocked to suspicious. As soon as he got the ability to, Liam made sure it was out of Jack’s sight and he went to pass back the next round.  _ Fuck _ .

A few weeks after that conversation about Liam’s sophomore year, Liam went over to Theo’s house again to stay for the weekend. Theo had made him dinner, they’d gone to bed together, and Liam stayed over for breakfast.

Theo was bustling around the kitchen and getting ready for the day, since he needed to go to a meeting with his employees that Saturday morning, and Liam was sitting at the counter watching as he went through the motions. For whatever reason, it was funny seeing Theo rush around getting ready for work. He guessed he’d just always imagined Theo going into the office whenever he felt like it, being the president and all. He hid his amusement in the rim of his coffee mug as Theo walked around.

Theo disappeared into his bedroom for a second, finally having gotten everything together, and reemerged with a small box. “Oh, I almost forgot,” Theo said as Liam was getting up from his barstool, getting ready to leave himself. He leaned over and pecked Liam on the cheek. “I got you something,” He said, holding the box out to Liam.

Even though the box was obviously a lot bigger than an engagement ring, Liam’s heart still did a stupid little flip when he saw it. He pushed down on the butterflies in his stomach and opened the black box, finding a beautiful silver watch with a blue face inside. It matched the color of Liam’s favorite tie, which Theo knew, and looked more expensive than anything Liam owned. Liam’s eyes widened.

“Theo, oh my God…”

“You like it?” Theo asked, a smile on his lips as he looked at Liam’s shocked face. 

Liam nodded, but his brain was malfunctioning, so he said something else instead. “I do, but I...this is so  _ expensive _ , T, I can’t take this…”

Theo didn’t even falter. He took the watch gently from Liam and started to slowly put it on Liam’s wrist, his fingers brushing his skin as he adjusted it to be just perfect. “Sure you can,” He said smoothly as he found the right tightness. Liam could smell the cologne he had just put on, and he wanted to lean into him despite his hesitance. “See? It looks good on you,” Theo said once the watch was on, grinning at Liam softly. 

“You don’t have to buy me things,” Liam sighed, even though he didn’t make any move to take the watch off. Knowing Theo, he’d find a way to put it back on him before he could leave.

Theo wrapped his arms around Liam’s waist and shook his head. “No, I like it,” He said, his voice the perfect kind of raspy in Liam’s ears. “I haven’t been able to spoil anybody like this in a long time.”

Liam’s heart fluttered in his chest, and his little frown of worry slipped into a smile. He leaned his head against Theo’s chest and breathed him in, shutting his eyes. He heard Theo laugh quietly above him.

“Y’know, my next project is probably going to be in Jamaica,” Theo said casually, but Liam could hear the suggestion in his tone. “You should come with me.”

Liam smiled at the thought, but he knew he couldn’t. “Wouldn’t that be a little suspicious?” He asked. “You and me  _ coincidentally _ leaving the country at the same time?”

But Theo wasn’t thinking about the logistics, something Liam liked about him. Theo had pipe dreams too. He put careful thought into some things, but he still knew how to daydream like everyone else. “It’d be amazing, though, wouldn’t it?” He breathed. “Imagine you and me in Jamaica, on our own private beach. We’d lay out in the sun for hours and get some nice tans, then go back to our hotel room and  _ fuck _ like rabbits,” Theo said the last part with a hint of a growl, making Liam swipe at him playfully and bite his lip. “We wouldn’t have a care in the world,” Theo whispered, calming down. “I’d take you there in a heartbeat.”

+++

But while things like that were nice, they were stressful. Jack seeing the evidence of Liam and Theo’s relationship stressed him out  _ far _ more than he thought it would, so much that he had to sit down and seriously think about it. He rubbed the silver band of the watch and chewed on his lip as he drove downtown the next day, the opposite direction from Theo’s place.

He pulled into the parking lot of a small diner, the meeting place that he’d kept since he was in college. Every time he needed to talk, they came there.

He was nervous as he walked in, but as soon as he saw Mr. Philips sitting at a table by the window, he broke into a smile.

Mr. Philips looked up at him with a grin, the wrinkles on his face pronounced. He had clearly not gotten a haircut since Liam last saw him a few months ago, since his grey hair was curling around his ears, and he was in need of a shave, but then again, he always kind of was. “Nice to see you again, Liam,” He greeted as Liam pulled the chair out to sit. “I ordered your usual already.”

Liam nodded in thanks and got settled in, already feeling a little better about things. 

When Liam had graduated high school, he’d definitely been ready to go, but there was one thing about school that he wasn’t ready to let go of: Mr. Philips. He was like a father to him when his biological dad wouldn’t be, and Liam couldn’t imagine never seeing him again. After the ceremony was over, Mr. Philips had come to him first, and they agreed to stay in touch. Liam wasn’t too stubborn to admit that he’d cried, not for the first time, right there in his classroom.

So ever since then, they’d meet to catch up, going to this diner and ordering breakfast food no matter what time of day it was. Mr. Philips helped Liam with a lot of things, from college to his friends to when he finally started his job in his place. Mr. Philips knew pretty much everything about Liam by now, and they were still friends even though it had been almost eight years since Liam had had him as a teacher. 

“How’ve you been?” Liam asked, taking a sip of the ice water Mr. Philips had gotten for him. Mr. Philips always had something to talk about, mostly about his grandchildren and what he was doing in retirement (which was  _ also _ taking care of his grandchildren, more often than not), but Liam was interested all the same.

“I’ve been good. My knee’s been better, probably from the cold letting up. Jess and Jada both got a stomach flu a few weeks ago, though. Have you ever taken care of two sick six-year olds? That wasn’t fun,” Mr. Philips considered. Liam winced sympathetically. “Anyway, I’ve been fine. But  _ you’re _ not,” He said. 

Liam startled and opened his mouth, wanting to ask how he knew, but Mr. Philips was already giving him a knowing look.

“You came in here lookin’ like you saw a ghost and you’re doing the finger-rubbing thing,” Mr. Philips said, glancing down at the table, where Liam was indeed rubbing his thumb and fingers together. “You always do that when you were upset.”

Liam sighed, rubbing at the space between his eyebrows instead. “It’s just been a busy couple of months,” He said. Mr. Philips raised an eyebrow at him, unconvinced. They both knew that  _ all _ months teaching highschoolers were busy, especially in Liam’s case. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” Liam admitted. 

“Continue,” Mr. Philips prompted when Liam paused so that their plates could be put down in front of them. Liam took a bite of his toast and swallowed it quickly so he could keep going.

“Well, there’s this kid in my sophomore history class,” Liam started. “You know how I was the difficult one in your class? He’s the one in mine,” He laughed. “His name is Jack, and his parents are both super rich. His mother used to be a model and his father literally owns his own company, so I didn’t really think they were making enough time for him at home. I mean, his dad has been on more business trips in the last three years than I’ve been out of the state in my entire life, and he and his wife went through a really nasty split, so I understand why he was acting out. I’ve been kind of helping him in that regard.”

Mr. Philips looked impressed, probably remembering how he had helped Liam. “That’s good,” He said, nodding and looking proud.

Liam scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah. I mean, his father actually donates a  _ lot _ to the school and wasn’t the most perceptive to my concerns at first, so I almost got myself fired getting involved-”

“Of course you did,” Mr. Philips interrupted. 

Liam kept going.“-But things are working better now. Jack’s gone from an F to a high C in a few months, and he’s behaving a lot better now since I’ve been meeting with his father. He’s actually a really nice kid. I’m glad I could open him up to my class more,” Liam said. He poked at his eggs with his fork. He couldn’t be as excited about this as he could before, not when he was carrying this weight. Maybe it had been relieved before, but as soon as Jack’s eyes had fallen on Liam’s watch, all of his anxiety and guilt had come back to hit him in the gut like a sack of bricks.

Mr. Philips obviously saw it on his face. “...But you don’t seem too happy about that,” He observed, his voice asking for more.

Liam bit his lip and nodded. He knew Mr. Philips wouldn’t judge him, but it was hard to think so. He didn’t see how  _ anyone _ would think that what he was doing was okay, even if his fear was just his guilt talking. “Because I’m kind of dating his father now,” Liam rushed out, then shut his eyes. 

A lot of things Liam had said to Mr. Philips had gone without much of a reaction, since he knew him too well by now, but that got him a decent look of surprise. Liam groaned quietly and covered his eyes with his hand, resting his elbow on the table. “...I can’t really say I saw that one coming,” Mr. Philips admitted. “I mean, what-?” He trailed.

Liam shook his head. “I don’t know,” He said. “It all just kind of happened. We were just spending so much time with each other and I got to know him way more than I thought I was going to, and I just…” Liam sighed. “I know it’s wrong for Jack and all, but he’s just... _ God _ .”

Mr. Philips gave him a sympathetic smile. “Yeah, I don’t know if that’s a move I would’ve made,” he said. Liam laughed despite himself. “I’m not sure that dating your mother would have helped you back then.”

“I know,” Liam groaned, drowning his sorrows with more bread and eggs. “I really didn’t mean to. Like I said, it just kind of happened one night and it spiraled from there. I should’ve stopped it from the first night, but then he was just so _perfect_ , and I couldn’t bring myself to leave,” He said. “And that _sucks_ , because I really like him, but I know that this isn’t going to work with Jack. He doesn’t know yet, but what happens when we have to tell him? He’s probably going to think that all of the work that we did together and how nice his dad has been has only been because we’re dating. I can’t imagine getting my father back in my life and him being good only to think that it was all because of a new, unstable relationship. And with me, no less! He trusts me, but to help him with his problems, not _fuck_ _his_ _father!_ He’s just a kid. He might never recover from that.”

Mr. Philips was quiet for a minute, looking at him thoughtfully. “But you’re happy?” He asked, putting all of the other things to the side.

Liam nodded. “Yeah,” He breathed.

Mr. Philips smiled softly. “Well, then you be careful about this, but don’t you  _ dare _ let go,” He said. Liam looked up at him, alarmed. Usually Mr. Philips was the voice of reason when Liam spiraled; that was why it was so surprising that he got  _ that _ answer. “I can’t say that Jack’s going to be happy about it, but  _ you _ don’t know that either. He’s surprised you before, right? Who knows, maybe he’ll be happy about it, even! That hasn’t happened yet, so you can’t let it ruin things  _ now _ . You always try to let the theoretical take over what actually happened,” Mr. Philips considered. “What  _ has _ happened is that you started dating Jack’s father, and you look happier than I’ve seen you in a long, long time. As soon as you started talking about him, even though you were upset, your eyes lit up like nothing else. He makes you happy,” Mr. Philips said. “And you deserve something good like this.”

Liam stared at him, speechless, unaware that his phone had buzzed three times where it was sitting on the table. Mr. Philips nodded to it with amusement in his eye. “You’ve got a text.”

**Theo (12:48 PM) -** **  
** **** **  
** **Theo (12:48 PM) - ❤️** **  
** **Theo (12:52 PM) - Do you want to come over for dinner tonight?**

“So,” Mr. Philips said after giving Liam a second to reply with a ‘yes.’ “Tell me about him. What’s his name?”

Liam put his phone down after sending a heart back and broke into a stupidly big smile. “Theo,” He breathed. “His name is Theo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!
> 
> I just realized that we're literally on chapter 9/13...wow. That's...wow.   
> This chapter was originally going to be split up into two different chapters, but I thought there wasn't enough action in either one of them for it to work out as two. That's why this was marked 13 chapters instead of 14 now...but knowing me and my indecisiveness, that's still subject to change.
> 
> Let me know what you think about Mr. Philips and everything else in the comments!!!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	10. Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam finally takes Theo to meet his roommates properly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep going entire days without writing and then suddenly getting the burst of energy to write an entire chapter in one day, so here's this one on schedule this time :) 10/13!!

Once lunch was over, Liam went straight to Theo’s place. He knew that Theo was inviting him for dinner, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to show up early. From the way Theo had been sending him more cat pictures here and there throughout the time Liam was at the diner, he somehow didn’t think Theo would mind his presence.

Sure enough, Theo was grinning as he opened the door for him two hours early. “Hey,” Liam greeted, stepping up onto the front step and leaning in to give Theo a kiss like they were accustomed to. Theo breathed in deeply and smiled against his mouth, one of his hands coming up to cup Liam’s cheek. 

“Welcome back,” Theo murmured, bumping their noses together. Liam laughed softly.

“Did you want to see me for some reason?” Liam asked. Considering that he’d been there less than twenty-four hours before and they hadn’t originally made plans for today, he thought something might’ve come up that Theo wanted to talk about. 

Theo paused, his brows furrowing and forming a cute line of confusion between them. “Uh, no, I just-” He stammered. Liam bit back a grin. Theo could go from sophisticated and sure of himself to confused and flustered like no one else Liam knew. “I just wanted to see you, I’m sorry if I bothered…”

“No, that’s not it…” Liam said, shaking his head. He reached up to put his hand on Theo’s cheek. Theo always did such a good job of making sure he was welcome, so Liam wanted to do the same for him. Theo relaxed into his touch and his smile came back slowly. “I just wasn’t expecting it, was all.”

Theo kissed him again, which he couldn’t get enough of, but Liam caught sight of Alice working on the flower garden only ten feet away. She knew about them and knew to keep it a secret, but Liam still wasn’t keen on letting her see everything. “So, you said you were cooking for me?” Liam said cheekily. Theo rolled his eyes lightheartedly.

“I see your priorities are still straight,” He sighed, but he was smiling as he led Liam inside. 

It was still early for dinner, so they caught up on a show they were watching together until around five o’clock. Liam sat at the kitchen island and enjoyed the smells from the food Theo was cooking. 

“It smells nice,” Liam said. “Wish you would let me know what it is,” He teased.

“That takes the fun out of it,” Theo argued. “I’ll give you a hint and say that it’s something with pasta.”

Liam laughed. “Yeah, I didn’t know that from the box of rotini that you put down right next to me,” He scoffed. Theo shook his head with a dramatic sigh and turned back to the sauce he was cooking in a pan. From what Liam could smell, it definitely had tomatoes in it, but knowing Theo, there would be some advanced flavor put in there that Liam wouldn’t be able to figure out. Theo always got a kick out of telling him after Liam gave up on guessing.

While Theo cooked, Liam opened up his phone. He’d gotten a few new emails from his boss and some students asking about homework, but while he was checking those, he got a message from the house groupchat.

**Nolan (5:12 PM) - istg Liam you’d better be getting dicked down GOOD to miss this pizza tonight** **  
** **Nolan (5:12 PM) - we tried the new place that just opened down by the pelican. It only sells cheese pizza and that’s it so it might be a front for the mob but it’s still really good** **  
** **Nolan (5:12 PM) - just know that you’re missing out on mob pizza tonight** **  
** **Alec (5:13 PM) - It is really good. And this is also like the fifth weekend in a row you’ve been gone, are you moving out??**

Liam shook his head to himself in amusement.

**Liam (5:13 PM) - ok this chat is literally called “house people” so idk how you got in** **  
** **Nolan (5:13 PM) - hey.** **  
** **Liam (5:13 PM) - and im sure there will be other opportunities for the mob pizza place** ****  
**Mason (5:14 PM) - You’re at Theo’s AGAIN???** **  
** **Mason (5:14 PM) - Omg you basically moved out. What’s next, are you having his babies?? Damn.**

“Mason just asked me if I’m having your babies,” Liam said. Theo choked on his breath and laughed. “Apparently that’s an assumption because I’m over here so much. Also, Nolan’s eating pizza from a mob front, according to him.”

“Interesting,” Theo chuckled, pouring pasta into the pan to coat it in sauce. “Well, is the mob pizza good?” 

“Probably not as good as  _ this _ ,” Liam marveled as Theo put a plate of pasta coated in orangey sauce down in front of him. He even put a little herb garnish on the top, as if Theo had to work to be fancy. Liam took a bite, knowing Theo was watching his reaction, and promptly moaned admittedly a little louder than he needed to just to get a rise out of him. “Okay, if it were possible, I  _ would _ have your babies if that meant I could get more of whatever  _ this _ is.”

Theo grinned proudly and started in on his own plate, but their conversation never stopped when it came to dinner. Theo chewed thoughtfully, then pointed his fork at Liam’s phone. “So, when am I going to meet your roommates when you’re not all concerningly drunk and falling off tables?”

Liam wanted to make a joke about the table thing, but he couldn’t get past his surprise. “Oh,” he said, a little bit of panic starting to seep into his chest. Of course Theo knew how chaotic Liam could be - he’d seen all of Liam’s anxious, disorganized movements for months now. He  _ hadn’t _ , however, seen where Liam lived, and how he got along with the three other  _ equally _ as chaotic guys he lived with, and part of him was afraid that someone like Theo wouldn’t like it. It was never a worry when his exes would fit right into the mess since they were messy themselves, but Theo was clearly different. “Y-you want to do that?” 

Theo nodded like it was a no-brainer. “Yeah,” He said. “I hear a lot about them, and they sound like nice people. Of course I want to meet your friends,” Theo said simply with a grin. “Maybe we’ll try mob pizza.”

Liam shook his head and took a bite of his pasta, starting to feel better about it already with how patient Theo was being. “Nah,  _ I’m _ cooking for  _ you _ , for once,” Liam said. “I mean, it may not be your michelin-star level cooking, but I know my way around a stove.” 

Theo was happy with that. “I’m looking forward to it,” He said.

Liam would have started making plans then, but he was pretty wrapped up in his pasta. “Okay, am I tasting vodka in here? Is that what this is tonight?” Liam asked, starting their guessing game as usual.

Theo laughed. “You  _ watched _ me put that in there, nice try. And that’s not what you’re tasting,” Theo teased. 

Liam shook his head. “No, I’m too invested in this to guess tonight,” He said.

Theo pulled out a small bottle from his pocket, ready to make a show out of it, since Liam obviously would have never guessed it. Liam took it from him and looked at Theo incredulously.

“Leave it to you to have _ truffle oil _ on hand,” He sighed, handing him back the bottle. “Sometimes your wealth is sickening.”

“Fifty dollars for eight ounces,” Theo admitted, looking a little unsure of the spending as well. “But it makes a good sauce, doesn’t it?”

+++

A little less than a week later, a Thursday when Jack was set to go to his mom’s early, Liam was rushing around the house in a flurry, looking around at everything he possibly could to make sure it was in check. The dishes were done and put away, the table was cleaned off of all its usual clutter, there were no stray shoes or socks laying around on the floor, and things had been kicked under the couch well enough that he didn’t think anyone would be able to tell. Still, he felt like every one of his buttons was being pushed at once, and he was whirling around every three seconds to check something different.

Everyone else was milling around cleaning, waiting for Theo to get there, and trying not to make Liam explode into a bomb of nerves. Liam stood by the front door and wrung his hands. “Nolan!” Liam prompted as he saw him walking past out of the corner of his eye. Nolan skidded to a stop and turned to him. “Is your room clean?”

“Are you guys  _ going _ in my room?” He scoffed.

“But is it  _ clean?” _ Liam repeated.

Nolan sighed. “I’ll keep the door shut while he’s here.”

Liam took that as a decent answer and sighed, letting Nolan go.

Mason was the one to walk up to him next. Out of all of them, he was always the one who was able to calm Liam down the best. Liam was suddenly nervous about his shirt, which he’d changed three times already. He was settled on a dark grey long-sleeve, but he tugged at the neckline and wondered if he should change again. “Do you think I look okay? Should I go back to the first shirt?” He asked Mason when he came and framed his shoulders with his hands to calm him down.

“You look fine,” Mason assured, rubbing Liam’s shoulders. “And let’s remember that he met you already, and he knows what you look like. You don’t have anything to worry about with that.”

“Just try not to burn the place down while cooking, that’d be awkward,” Nolan called out in passing, probably still a little annoyed at the clean room comment. Liam shuddered and whined pitifully.  _ Oh fuck, what if he screwed up the food?  _

“ _ Not _ helpful!” Mason scoffed as Nolan walked around. Liam chewed his lip. “Hey, don’t do that, you’re gonna make it bleed,” He scolded. Liam had already bitten holes in his mouth twice already since he got home from work to get the house clean. “Everything is gonna be fine. You look great, the house is cleaner than it’s been since our first week of living here, and you’re an awesome cook. You’re still making the chicken herb thing, right?” Mason asked. Liam nodded. “Corey will help you if that would make you feel better.”

“I will,” Corey confirmed, holding up the chicken in the package. Liam blanched.

“Did that  _ just _ come out of the freezer?” He wheezed, thinking in horror about the two hours that those chicken breasts usually needed to thaw. Mason squoze his shoulders and led him away from the front door and into the hallway instead to distract him. 

“No, you took those out as soon as you got home from work, remember? They’re ready to go,” Mason soothed. Liam took a deep breath, starting to understand how ridiculous he was being. “Come on, you’ve got nothing to worry about. I might start getting a little offended that you’re so nervous about him meeting us,” Mason joked, punching him in the arm. 

Liam gave him a weak smile, but it fell as soon as he heard a knock on the door.  _ “Shit,” _ He hissed under his breath, looking himself over one last time and rushing to go get it.

If Theo was nervous at all, it didn’t show on his face. He stood at Liam’s front door in an army-green button down and slacks, coming from work, but he’d picked up flowers on the way there. He smiled as soon as he saw Liam. “Hi,” He greeted, stepping inside when Liam moved out of the way. “I got these for you,” He said, handing Liam white lilies. 

Liam smiled, some of his tension easing. “They’re so pretty, thank you,” He said, breathing them in. “I’ll put them in water, come on in.” Liam held Theo’s wrist and pulled him into the kitchen so he could get the vase off the top of the fridge. 

Liam filled the glass vase up with water as quickly as he could as Theo looked around the kitchen. Corey, who was already standing at the counter and getting ingredients together to work with, looked impressed with the gesture and gave Theo a polite smile and a wide-eyed look to Liam. “I know you’ve kind of met everyone already, but this is Corey,” Liam motioned to him, narrowly avoiding dropping the vase on the floor with a wince. 

“And I’m Nolan, this is Alec,” Liam heard from behind them. Theo was shaking their hands when he turned around.

“Yeah, Alec doesn’t actually  _ live _ here, he just kind of shows up now,” Liam explained when Theo seemed confused about Liam seemingly having four roommates instead of three. “He was the bartender that got me super drunk off cheap tequila that one night,” Liam said. 

“And you were the knight in shining armor that caught Liam before he concussed himself!” Alec said even though he knew that already, pointing at Theo with a grin.

The two of them started talking about Liam’s big night at the bar, so Liam was almost too caught up in the funny conversation to notice that Mason had finally made his entrance. Liam’s eyes fell on him in the middle of a joke and he faltered. “Oh, and Mason!” 

Mason didn’t say anything, instead just crossing the floor to shake Theo’s hand. Liam swallowed. Mason was always the hardest one when it came to his boyfriends meeting his roommates, and by the serious but polite look on his face, Liam didn’t think this would be any different. “Mason,” Mason introduced simply.

Theo took his hand and shook it while Liam watched slightly apprehensively. “Theo. It’s good to meet you all again under better circumstances,” Theo said, looking around at everyone in the kitchen. Alec and Corey laughed, Nolan patted Liam on the back harder than necessary just to jostle him around, and Mason stayed looking at Theo. 

Liam could feel the awkward tension that was about to start rising up in the kitchen once introductions died out, so he reached around internally for one of the similarities he’d found in Theo and his roommates. (He’d made a list.) “So, Theo, Nolan likes to travel. Why don’t you tell him about some of the places you’ve been?”

Theo didn’t seem to mind the guided conversation, and though Nolan raised an eyebrow at it, they got going long enough for Liam to start making dinner. Corey was helping and chopping up some potatoes to roast, and there wasn’t a lot Liam had to do to the boneless chicken to prepare it, so he was able to get started pretty quickly. He figured the sooner he could get food into people, the easier this would be.

Nolan, Alec, Theo, and Mason sat at the table not far away and talked about Theo’s job. Liam caught hints of the conversation, with Nolan being jealous about Theo’s trips to France and Alec sharing his experiences with the locals of Italy. Since the kitchen and the table were in an open plan, Corey and Liam put in their own comments, even if they weren’t always heard.

It seemed like things were going good so far, in Liam’s opinion. He remembered the disastrous first meeting of Brett and his roommates, who had decided very quickly that they didn’t like his fratboy nature and the way he couldn’t say anything without it being a joke. Theo wasn’t like Brett at  _ all _ , so that was a pretty good starter, and he seemed to be doing okay even though Liam had sort of left him to fend for himself in terms of talking. 

He seemed to have at least one thing in common with each of them, as Liam found out through snippets of conversation that drifted over to the stove. Alec and Theo were both apparently a part Native-American, Nolan shared a favorite food with him, and Corey and Theo bonded over their hatred for reality TV shows and how fake they really were. 

Mason wasn’t budging as easily, though. He didn’t participate much in the conversation, which irked Liam, especially since he couldn’t  _ make _ Mason talk. He mostly sat and listened, leaning back in his chair and seemingly analyzing every word that came out of Theo’s mouth. It made Liam uneasy. Theo wasn’t in the habit of saying anything offensive, but sometimes he did refer to topics that Liam had to remind him were _ ‘rich people things.’ _ He didn’t think Mason would get  _ offended _ , per say, but he might take any opportunity he got to question Theo.

It made Liam worry, especially when Mason finally decided to speak and the first thing out of his mouth was way more serious than anything else that had been discussed in the hour they’d been there.

“So, Theo,” Mason started, leaning forward in his chair. Liam sucked in a breath and Corey looked at him sympathetically - they both knew that voice, inquisitive, but ready to judge. At least Theo had turned his full attention to him, as Liam noted when he stole a quick glance at them from the cutting board. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

“That sounds like a job interview question, Mase,” Corey scolded, putting down his knife and giving his boyfriend a raised eyebrow. Mason shrugged, set in his ways, and Theo rubbed the back of his neck. 

He stayed cool, though. “Well, in five years, I’d hope to have a couple of new projects done, at least two,” He said, looking at Mason seriously before a smirk came to his face. “But I know we’re not really talking about my career. I think in five years I’d like to be a lot more settled down,” He said. “I’ve been traveling for a long time, but I’ve gotten used to being home more recently. I like being home with the people who matter and having time to breathe for once,” Theo explained. 

Liam paused where he was putting chicken in the oven and bit his lip, this time for an entirely different reason, to hide a smile. He felt Corey’s stare on him, but he didn’t look at him in fear of letting out the embarrassingly high noise that was playing through his brain right then. 

When he looked back at the table, which had gone silent, he watched Mason’s posture go from serious to satisfied as he leaned back in his chair again. That had apparently been the right answer, and Theo had said it perfectly.

Dinner was almost ready a few minutes later when Theo wandered over into the kitchen, standing behind him. “Is there anything I can help with?” He asked. 

“No,  _ I’m _ supposed to be the one cooking for  _ you _ ,” Liam said. He cast a quick glance at Corey. “...And Corey, I guess,” He amended quickly. “We’re almost done, anyway.”

“Theo, there’s a box of chocolate on the counter if you want to open it up and put it on the table,” Corey said, motioning to a box Liam hadn’t noticed. “I picked it up on the way back from work. I figure we can eat some before dinner, since we’ve got around ten minutes.”

Theo carefully took the plastic wrapping off the square box of chocolate, then opened the lid and tucked it under the box. He took one out and popped it into his mouth, then came over to Liam with one. “Here, open up,” He prompted.

Liam craned his neck over for Theo to put it in his mouth while he was putting the potatoes in a bowl. It took a second for him to register what he was tasting, and when he did, he shuddered. “ _ Ooh _ , that’s... _ bitter _ ,” He cringed, swallowing it and reaching for his glass of water to wash out the taste.

“Not a fan of dark chocolate?” Theo asked with amusement. Liam shook his head. “You like milk, then?”

Liam nodded, but Nolan snorted from his place at the table, not looking up from his phone. “Liam and his child-level tastebuds like  _ white _ ,” Nolan laughed. Theo turned to him with wide eyes and Liam groaned.

“You  _ do?”  _ Theo asked, sounding about as disgusted as everyone else was when they found out that yes, Liam liked white chocolate. “I mean, I kind of get not liking  _ dark _ , but that’s…”

“I know, and I don’t care,” Liam argued. “And I don’t care that it’s not ‘ _ real chocolate _ ’ either. It’s sweet and I like it, and I don’t see why there’s such a hate campaign against it.” Liam was always ready to defend his tastes. 

Theo shook his head. “Okay, but I’m not kissing you after you’ve eaten white chocolate,” He said, coming over behind Liam again after putting the chocolate on the table. Liam rolled his eyes at him. “But I’ll kiss you now for making you eat dark chocolate.” Liam rolled his eyes less at that, and his friends even had the decency to hold their gagging noises like they usually wouldn’t have.

As they all sat down for dinner, Theo close by Liam’s side, he couldn’t help but look around and feel warm. He was there with his friends, even if they were a little annoying at times, and he was still close enough to Theo that their ankles were linked under the table like dumb teenagers. Theo was laughing at the ridiculous jokes his roommates were telling and praising the food Liam and Corey had made, but what was best was when he looked over at Liam just because he could. Liam’s heart fluttered every time and he nudged him with his elbow just to get him to look at him again, and Theo was going right along with it. 

It was all so incredibly domestic, the way that Theo fit into his life almost seamlessly. In the orange light of Liam’s only sort-of clean house, Theo looked like he should’ve been there all along with a smile on his face and potatoes on his fork. He had to stop himself from outright staring at Theo a few times.

The jovial mood couldn’t last forever, though. Mason had been going with the flow as best as he knew how, but he was clearly still thinking about things more serious than their casual chatter. Almost out of nowhere, during a lull in conversation about Alec and bartending, Mason spoke up again with something entirely new.

“So, what are your intentions with Liam?”

Liam almost choked on his chicken and his eyes popped out at Mason. Theo rubbed his back until he caught his breath, but Liam was more focused on the death-stare he was trying to scare Mason with. “Mason, what the  _ hell?” _ Liam coughed, looking at him like he was insane. Mason kept his gaze fixed on Theo determinedly in a way that Liam really didn’t like. “Are you kidding me?”

He couldn’t believe Mason was doing this at all. He’d always been protective over him, ever since high school, but he usually beat around the bush. It sounded so incredibly alike to the stereotypical  _ dad/boyfriend talk _ that Liam hoped he was joking. It was alarming, especially since Mason had been the one to urge Liam into the relationship and told him that he should be going for it in the first place.

Mason raised his hands in surrender, but only towards Liam. His question still stood. “Believe me, I want it to work out between you two, but think about how this looks to someone who’s concerned. It’s just that you’re so much younger than him and a lot less powerful. You went from a high school teacher to suddenly being bought expensive watches and having your weekends taken up, and that’s  _ different _ . You’ve been hurt before by less, and I’m just trying to make sure that you’re not being taken advantage of.”

Liam stammered, but Theo cut him off. “I would never,” Theo said without hesitation, both firmly but sounding slightly distressed. Theo’s hand found Liam’s under the table. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Liam is one of the best things in my life,” Theo said, his tone softening. Liam looked up at him, his lips parting on their own. “I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I fucked up enough to lose him.”

Liam felt like the air had been stolen out of his lungs, his heart wrenching in his chest and making his entire body come to a full stop. He stared openly then. Theo was looking down at him then, a tiny smile on his face, and Liam felt something click into place. 

There was a reason he loved Theo fitting just right at the table, loved him being in his life, and a reason that he couldn’t breathe. He was in  _ love _ with Theo, fully and uncontrollably, and he should’ve known that long before.

He was quiet for a lot of the meal after that, his heart hammering away and going faster every time Theo’s perfect voice spoke. All he could think about for the next hour, all through dinner and dessert, was that he, Liam Dunbar, was in  _ love _ with Theo Raeken, and it felt so  _ right _ .

+++

Liam had regained his ability to talk by the time they got back to Theo’s house. He wouldn’t be able to stay the night, since it was a Thursday and he still had work tomorrow, but Jack was gone early, so he still got to sit with Theo for awhile and talk. 

Instead of the study or living room, they sat at the dining room table. Liam had always loved Theo’s dining room with the chandelier over the table and the big windows, and the view of the night-darkened yard and flower garden seemed like the perfect atmosphere to spend time with Theo in. It was pretty enough to match the man next to him. 

“Did I do okay?” Theo asked when they sat down next to each other. 

Liam raised his eyebrows. Theo sounded a lot more worried than he’d even thought he needed to be, even if things hadn’t gone as smoothly as they did that night. “ _ Yeah _ ,” He said breathlessly, surprised that Theo even felt the need to ask. “You did great.”

Theo let out an audible sigh of relief. “Oh, good,” He breathed, putting a hand on his chest. Liam smiled. “I wanted to do good for you.” Liam’s heart almost broke at the tired but relieved look on Theo’s face, and Theo came closer to cup his cheek like he loved so much. “I really wanted them to like me. I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t really have a ton of friends, so I wanted yours’ to at least think I’m okay,” He explained quietly. “And they’re important to you, so they’re important to me.”

When Theo leaned in and kissed him firmly but sweetly, Liam felt the warm feeling in his chest that hadn’t let up in hours, but amplified times a million. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to leave tonight without telling him. The words were on the tip of his tongue, begging to come out as soon as Theo pulled away from him, so ready to burst that Liam thought he might cry. He started to pull away himself to tell him right then-

-and was interrupted by the sound of a clod of flowers ripped up from the front garden hitting the window with a hard  _ thump _ .

The look on Jack’s face was one of pure anger, his arm still poised from the throw, but Liam barely got to see it before he was coming through the front door. They didn’t get even a glance thrown their way as Jack ran up the stairs to the second floor. All they heard was the slam of his bedroom door, then dead silence.

Liam’s blood ran cold. Theo’s hand was no longer on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Yeah, that hurt.
> 
> I'm not gonna say too much, but we all knew he was going to find out eventually, huh :(
> 
> Let me know what you're thinking in the comments - I'd love to see your opinions on this one!!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	11. Inevitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam faces the inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost, I just want to say thank you for all the love that this fic has gotten. It's not over yet, but the support I've gotten on it is insane. This has been by far one of my favorite fics to write, and I look forward to each chapter I post to see what you guys are going to say about it. Thank you for all of the comments, and thank you for all of the hits and kudos. It makes my day that my favorite work of mine has become also my most popular :) Love you all so much.

Liam took shaky breaths on the way back to his house. He didn’t remember what he said to Theo and what Theo said to him on his way out, or if they had even touched before he left - hell, Liam could barely even remember his own name. He was out of there like a ghost, his natural instinct having taken the rare path towards flight instead of fight, even though it had sent him running away from who he felt safest with. Comfort zones didn’t matter anymore.

He felt like things altogether weren’t real. He barely registered the drive home, moving on autopilot, and the path from Liam’s driveway to his front door felt like his feet had never hit the ground. It was the same dazed, out-of-body feeling that Liam had gotten when he’d come home after sleeping with Theo for the first time, but this time, it was a hundred times worse. With Theo, he’d been given the choice on whether or not to worry about it. With Jack, he wasn’t.

His keys dropped into the dish by the front door with an audible clink that Liam didn’t even blink at. He looked around his house, darkened and empty as all of his roommates were in their rooms. He distantly heard music playing from Nolan’s room and the clicking of Mason’s laptop keyboard, but instead of focusing on that, his eyes zoned into the clear glass vase of flowers Theo had given him just hours before.

Theo had stood in his doorway and given him the bouquet of white lilies with a smile, and Liam had accepted them without a second thought. They’d come in together, he’d introduced Theo to his friends, Mason had fathered him a little, and then they went back to Theo’s house. All of that seemed like an eternity ago, but glancing at the clock on the cable box reading 9:42, he knew it had only been a few hours. 

The house was exactly as he had left it, but it still felt foreign to be there. He was supposed to be at Theo’s house, basking in the brightness of the first _ “I love you,” _ but he was there where the flowers sat on the table and the dishes were undone in the sink. The smell of the chicken hung in the air, and even though he couldn’t possibly still have it in his mouth, Liam still tasted the bitterness of dark chocolate. 

He was lucky his roommates weren’t around to ask any questions, and he stumbled towards his bedroom. He flicked the lights on, got out of his jeans, and forgot to flip the switch back into the dark before he crawled into bed.

His eyes remained open, staring at the wall as sleep refused to take him. He wasn’t anxious - not yet - but he knew deep down that it would come soon. 

He still didn’t flinch when his phone chimed by his head in the sound he’d set specifically for Theo. The messages from before were still visible, and Liam’s eyes glossed over them with a weird sense of disconnect towards the words on his screen. They were so distinctly different.

  
  


**Theo (5:45 PM): I’ll be there soon, I can’t wait to see you x** **  
** **Theo (9:57 PM): We should probably talk about this.**

_ Exactly four hours and twelve minutes apart, _ Liam thought, somehow still able to do math with a fuzzy brain. Liam let out a long breath and rubbed the space between his eyes, then clumsily typed out a response with tired thumbs.

**Liam (9:57 PM): yeah. tomorrow after work? I’ll be home**

The reply came just a second later, but it was enough time for Liam to have started reflexively chewing the nail on his thumb. Waiting for a reply had never been nearly this stressful.

**Theo (9:57 PM): That works. I’ll see you then.**

There was no  _ x _ or heart at the end of his message, which Liam shouldn’t have expected, but he closed his eyes in defeat either way. 

Sleep felt like it took hours to take him, but in reality, he drifted into a restless, dreamless sleep only a couple minutes later. His last thoughts were of what Theo might be thinking, not yet accepting that he had a job to go to tomorrow morning.

+++

Liam blinked at himself in the mirror the whole time he was getting dressed. He put on his white button-up, grey slacks, and the blue tie that Theo had bought the watch to match. The watch, however, stayed in Liam’s sock drawer, and he made sure to push a few pairs over the case on  _ “accident” _ so he didn’t have to see it.

As he straightened his tie in the mirror, he was reminded that he would be going into work soon, which no longer felt as normal as it should be. Soon enough, he’d go and do his job, and pretend that nothing was different about the night he’d had before. He’d pretend that his stomach wasn’t eating away at itself while he tried desperately to ignore it. He’d pretend that one of his students didn’t suddenly hate him with a burning passion as he tried to give his sophomores a review on the quiz that day. 

The thought made him feel like complete shit.

He walked into the kitchen to find out that he’d woken up earlier than he’d needed to, so no one was up and around yet to ask him any questions. That meant he got to make himself a bagel and manage not to burn it, then try and eat it only to find that he’d rather throw up than take another bite. He dropped it into the bin next to the counter and went for his coffee instead, thankful that nobody had been there to watch him move around looking scatterbrained. He didn’t feel like answering questions at all. As far as they knew, nothing was happening.

But things  _ were _ happening. Things were happening so fast that Liam couldn’t wrap his mind around a single one of them, and he was running out of time to do so. The cluelessness made him feel weak and useless, but he had to push through. He had a job to do and kids to teach, so until he saw them, he had to put Theo and Jack Raeken as far out of his head as he possibly could.

He made his way to work sipping on too-hot, too-sweet coffee that only worked to nauseate him.

+++

He managed to get through his first period class without that many bumps, since the seniors he taught were well-behaved and took almost the whole period to do their scheduled quiz. He only had to tell someone to be quiet once, which took a lot of his low supply of energy, but the kid had shut up pretty smoothly and made his job easy in the beginning. 

However, as the time during first period started to cycle through and dwindle out, Liam felt more and more dread in the pit of his stomach. Anxiety and guilt stabbed through him, and he had to hide it from his students as they walked out. Part of him wished that first period could last forever and he’d never have to see his second period class again.

Still, he stood up and put a brave face on, waiting for his students to come in. He held the attendance sheet on a clipboard against his stomach, tilting it so it tapped anxiously against him, but kept a neutral smile on his face as people started to come in and greet him.

He watched as people filled their seats, glancing over at Jack’s often.  _ What would it be like to see him? _ Liam asked himself, swallowing down nerves.  _ Would he say something? Do something? Would he even show up at all? _ He found himself hoping that Theo might’ve given him the day off from school, even if that was the coward’s dream.

Still, most of the seats were filled up before his. Cass came into the classroom looking slightly troubled, presumably since Jack wasn’t walking with her, but she still gave Liam a familiar smile. She stopped at his desk before she went to her seat like usual. “Good morning, Mr. Dunbar,” She said happily, any trace of confusion on her face gone. Liam had to hold in a sigh of relief - if Cass’s demeanor was anything to go by, Jack hadn’t told her, at least not yet. Liam must have showed something different on his face when he nodded to her, because her mouth turned into a small frown. “Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

Liam snapped back into himself, giving an awkward laugh. “Oh, I’m fine, I just woke up a little too early,” He said, not all untruthfully. Once again, his generally clumsy nature allowed him that excuse, and Cass nodded understandingly and went to go sit down. Liam checked _ “Cass Brantford” _ off on his attendance sheet and tried to get his breathing in check.

He glanced up at the clock nervously, finding that there were only about thirty seconds until the late bell rang and everyone else was in their seats or coming in. Jack might not have been the best student, but he usually wasn’t late. It made him wonder if he really wasn’t coming after all.

The hallways were quiet as far as he could hear, so Liam sighed to himself and went to shut the door. He wasn’t looking as he pulled it shut, some relief starting to wash over him, so he didn’t expect it when the edge suddenly caught. A few of his students laughed as Liam was filled with horror at the fact that he’d just  _ hit _ Jack with the door, somehow making everything  _ so _ much worse.  _ Leave it to me to add insult to injury. _

His mouth opened to apologize, but the daggers Jack glared at him as he stalked towards his seat shut him right down. All he could do was watch guiltily as Jack dropped his bag on the floor unceremoniously, slumped down into his chair, and folded his arms over his chest, all while ignoring Cass’s concerned looks and holding his scowl at Liam. Liam swallowed hard. 

Liam’s body was a traitor, he decided then, because all he wanted to do was cry. He didn’t cry when he got home the night before, but now his brain had decided that it was the only thing that made sense to do. There, in front of twenty-some sixteen year olds, he wanted nothing more than to burst into tears.

Instead of royally embarrassing himself, Liam turned to the board to get himself together where no one would see him.  _ Just a few more hours, _ he told himself.  _ Just a few more hours and you’ll get to see Theo. You’ll work it out. You always work it out. All you have to do is hold out for just a little longer. _

“Okay,” Liam forced out, speaking to his board more to his class uncharacteristically. He thought if he started right away and got his students working, he might be able to get through this period easier. “All we really have to do today is the quiz that we’ve been working towards this week. Should I do some review like normal?” He asked, hoping that he wouldn’t have to. Behind him, he heard some noncommittal noises, but he couldn’t ignore the couple of definite “yes’s.” He wasn’t about to deny his students the usual quiz review if it would help them, no matter how much he wanted to collapse in on himself. 

His hands were shaky as he wrote _ ‘REVIEW’ _ on the board. “Um, so,” Liam stammered, internally kicking himself for sounding like such an idiot. He already knew how Jack probably saw him - a stupid, blubbering dumbass who couldn’t do anything right, but he wasn’t trying to prove that theory. “I guess we’ll start with the Treaty of Versailles…”

As Liam wrote, he continued to keep his back turned to his class, which he normally wouldn’t do. He knew that if he looked at everyone too much, his eyes would fall automatically back to Jack, and he didn’t think he’d be able to hold it together. “So, once there was a disagreement among the countries involved with the treaty, what happened?” He asked. 

No one spoke a word, waiting for him to give them the answers. This time, he relented. He swallowed and started to write the answer himself.

He wouldn’t have stopped if it wasn’t for the loud  _ crack _ of a disposable plastic water bottle hitting the chalkboard in the space by his head, half-full, lid closed, and remarkably loud in a room with only idle sound. His entire body tensed, making the tip of his chalk break against the board, and it took a full second for anyone to speak. He heard Cass’s voice whisper a shocked  _ “Jack!” _ while the others stayed in stunned silence. 

The bottle was right by his feet, but he didn’t dare look at it. Instead, Liam turned his head slowly to look at Jack. Cass was still poised with an interrogative look, but Jack’s eyes were focused right on Liam, his glare sharp enough to bore holes in Liam’s skin. 

What he saw in Jack’s eyes was nothing but the pure anger and betrayal of a teenager who Liam had made hate him, and it was sickening. 

Jack was the same person who had come to him in a panic about pregnancy and a girl he really liked, and Liam had been the one to buy him the tests and tell him it was going to be okay. Liam was the person that Jack had trusted the most, over his own  _ father _ , to help him both with that and everything else, and Liam had betrayed that trust without a second thought about it.

He was looking into the face of a boy who had spent his  _ entire _ life chasing after the love and attention of his father, which Liam knew all too well. He had only ever been trying to help Jack get that, but now that he had it, he probably thought that everything Theo had done to change was fake. His grades may be up and his father might be around for him again, but to a teenager whose life consisted of questioning anything and everything, it all meant nothing now that Liam was thrown into the mix. Why should anything be genuine if it was all kept a secret from him? Why would Liam’s trust and Theo’s affections, the only things Jack had wanted, be  _ real _ , be  _ worth _ anything, when they were going behind his back the whole time and mixing things together that shouldn’t have been mixed?

Jack looked at him like he had ruined  _ everything _ , and Liam’s breath caught in his throat when he realized that he was  _ right _ . It was time to face the truth, and the truth, as it always was, was ugly.

Tears stung the backs of Liam’s eyes and he bit his lip so hard it bled as he turned back to the board and continued to write. He said nothing about the water bottle - He couldn’t bring himself to get Jack in trouble, not now. He was back to square one, just like he should’ve expected.

  
Besides, Liam knew he would have deserved it being thrown even if it had hit him in the face.

+++

Sometimes distraction was the best tactic. He kept his wits together as he waited for Theo to be done work and half-watched, half-ignored a show on Netflix, once again grateful that no one was around to see him like this.

It was hell waiting for Theo, since he knew what was coming next. He was stupid to think that he and Theo would work this out and be able to ignore what was right in front of them like they usually did. Everything that he had done was exactly what he wanted to avoid, and Liam would have to be blind and deaf to make excuses for it.

Jack had come out of his classroom with more pain than he’d had coming in, and that was all Liam’s fault. 

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door, and he thought bitterly of just twenty-six hours and ten minutes before. This time, Theo wouldn’t be standing with a bouquet of flowers, Liam reminded himself as he turned the knob.

He was. Liam glanced down to the flowers, white roses this time instead of lilies, and back up to Theo. He stood in front of Liam with a tiny ghost of a smile on his plump lips, green eyes looking at him kindly through square-rimmed glasses, and the bouquet outstretched slightly towards Liam. The picture Theo made here in only the second time in his house did nothing to help his heart that was already screaming out. 

He didn’t take the bouquet of flowers from Theo’s hands. “Hi,” He choked out instead, going for strong and ending up skirting the line of weak. “Come in.”

Theo stepped into the house. This time, he didn’t look around, his eyes staying focused only on Liam. He followed Liam into the living room and placed the flowers down on the coffee table. “Can I get you anything to drink?” Liam asked hoarsely.

“I’m okay,” Theo denied, shaking his head. He wasn’t making this any easier on him at all. Theo never was one for pleasantries. “How are you?” 

“Okay,” Liam lied. They stared at each other for a moment before Liam gestured to the couch to sit down. They both faced each other, and Liam pointedly ignored the roses on the table. One of the petals had already fallen off one of them. “So...we should talk about what happened last night,” Liam said gently.

“Yeah,” Theo agreed, clearing his throat and straightening up. “I didn’t get to talk to him last night. He locked his door and wouldn’t let me in his room, but from what I got out of it, he forgot his phone charger and was only planning to pop back over and grab it when he saw us,” Theo explained, sounding apologetic. “He never meant to try and catch us in anything.”

“I figured as much,” Liam murmured. 

Theo chewed the side of his mouth while Liam fidgeted with his fingers. He could feel the tension building between the two of them, each of them wondering when the other was going to finally speak and put them both out of their silent misery with a solution. 

“So-” Theo started.

“I-” Liam began at the same time, then shut his mouth and held up his hands. “You talk,” Liam said, swallowing roughly.

Theo nodded, looking away. “I feel really,  _ really _ bad about what happened,” Theo said. Liam nodded in agreement, feeling the sadness already start seeping in through his skin. He already knew they had the same thing in mind. He could tell just by the way Theo was talking.

But Theo, as always, knew how to throw him for a loop. When Theo’s eyes met his again, he saw glimmers of  _ hope _ , and Liam wanted to finally cry right there. “But I think we can ease him into it,” Theo was saying, the beginnings of a hopeful smile starting at the corners of his lips. “It was the same thing when Tracy and I got divorced. He didn’t like it, of course he didn’t like it, but he got  _ used _ to it eventually. If we just give him some time and put a little more thought into how things move from now on…”

“ _ Theo… _ ” Liam started, but Theo was still going.

“We could talk, just the three of us, and see all of our sides,” Theo said, his voice rising more and more, like he was actually imagining a time and place where that would work. Liam shook his head. “You taught me that communication is really important, so we can use that! We can…” Theo trailed, looking into Liam’s eyes almost desperately now. Liam tried to interrupt him again, but he got nothing. “...W-we can use that,” He repeated, his voice starting to quiet. “Liam?”

Liam blinked back tears and shook his head, watching as Theo’s face fell. 

Despite the way that his entire being was begging him not to say it, not to do it, Liam had to. “I don’t think we can keep doing this,” He breathed. The remainder of Theo’s dim smile slipped off his face, and his green eyes searched Liam’s for anything that he somehow hadn’t found yet. Liam bit back the knot in his throat. “I did the math,” He said. “During my lunch break at school. I’m not even-” He cut off on a breath. “I was still twenty-five when he was already sixteen. I’m not even ten years  _ older _ than him, Theo,” Liam said, feeling his heart pound in his chest. “I’m closer to his age than I am to yours.” Theo’s lips parted, but Liam didn’t let him speak. “He’s your  _ son _ ,” Liam breathed, feeling tears well up in his eyes. He blinked them away quickly. He didn’t want Theo to see him cry. “We might not be doing anything wrong, and this might not affect us, but it affects him, and I can’t-” He stuttered. “It’s not right to Jack. He’s my student, and I’m his teacher. I’m supposed to be someone he can relate to and trust, and with you and me being together...I can’t,” Liam said. Theo bit his lip. “I can’t-”

“I know.”

“The way he  _ looked _ at me today...It was like every  _ bit _ of trust he had for me was betrayed, and I’m sure it was. I can’t hurt him like that. I can’t do that to him.”

Tears were welling up in Theo’s eyes, making them look heartbreakingly vulnerable. “...I know,” Theo whispered, pushing past the lump in his throat. “I can’t either.”

In that moment, Liam felt like every cell in his body was screaming. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch him, kiss him, tell him that he loved him as he meant to only a day before, tell him that he was so much different than anyone else he’s ever known, but he didn’t. He stayed silent and watched as Theo rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, no longer looking at him. 

“...So this is it, huh?” Theo asked as clearly as he could a few seconds later. Liam’s heart broke at the way he leveled his voice out. It sounded exactly the way it had when they’d first met - all business, no room for feelings. Only the tears in Theo’s eyes and the crack on the last word told him anything otherwise, but that was what sent him spiraling down even faster. 

Liam bit his tongue and made himself nod. Theo followed, biting down on his lower lip.

“Okay,” Theo whispered, nodding once more, and then got up. Quickly brushing a single tear away, he straightened out his tie and his shirt, looked at Liam one more time, and then started walking to the door.

Liam tensed as if he was going to yell for Theo to stop, but his vocal chords felt tied in a knot and there was nothing he could do.

Just as quickly as he had come into Liam’s life, Theo left it, the bouquet of flowers still sitting on the coffee table as a dark reminder of all that was.

+++

Liam barely had any time to register what was happening. His heart was pounding in his chest and he was starting at the corner of the room when the front door opened once more, revealing Mason and Corey walking in laughing and talking from the dinner they’d grabbed together. Their laughter quickly cut off when Mason saw Liam and nudged Corey in the side.

“Hey,” Corey said gently, concerned. “Are you okay?”

And just like that, everything came out at once. Liam nodded, but a choked sob gave him away and Mason and Corey were suddenly at both of his sides on the couch in an instant. 

Liam let the tears fall freely, remembering everything all at once. He remembered the first time he met Theo and how much he’d hated him, remembered the first emails and when Theo had told him to feel better when he was sick. He remembered his arm on Theo’s, comforting him, and Theo doing the same when he talked about his father. Their first kiss. Their first time. Their first dinner together, their first breakfast together, their first  _ everything _ and all that came in between. The first  _ I-love-you _ that never happened.

“Hey, hey, what happened?” Mason whispered. Liam’s head fell onto his shoulder as he folded in on himself.

Liam gasped for air, his head starting to pound. “Jack found out,” He cried shakily, holding onto Mason tightly. “He found out l-last night and it all went to shit.” 

“Oh my God…” Mason breathed, turning his head to look at Corey, who was rubbing Liam’s back from his other side.

The door opened again, this time showing Nolan standing there. Corey and Mason must have looked at him in some way, since he dropped his bag by the door and headed over to him without a second thought. “What’s wrong?” He asked softly, rubbing Liam’s hair. Liam shook his head, unable to get the words out.

As the three of them held him, Liam continued to rock back and forth until everything hurt and he had nothing left in him to cry and he was reduced to gasping breaths and dry breathing.  _ He’d done _ the right thing, he repeated to himself every so often, but the tightness in his chest tacked on ‘ _ and ruined the best thing you had because of it’ _ at the end.

“It’s over,” Liam breathed at one point, still leaning into Mason’s chest, his eyes wide and unblinking. “It’s all over,” he said as the sudden exhaustion started to take him out. 

He started to fade out into his headache, unknowing that Theo was doing the same, fingers clutched in his blanket just like Liam’s were holding onto Mason’s shirt sleeves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't kill me too violently :(  
> I've said it before and I'll say it again - I'm not the greatest at angst, but I did try really hard to do this right. Let me know what you think of it though :)
> 
> Tell me what you're thinking in the comments (and go ahead and yell at me some)  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	12. More Than Anything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam misses Theo more than anything, but he's still grappling with the joint pressure of his job and his life.

“How many times has it been?” Liam heard Corey whisper to Mason and Nolan behind the couch, but he paid no attention, keeping his eyes trained on the TV.

“In total, or just for today?” Nolan whispered back. “Because I think today it’s the third. I know he got up and took a nap at some point since I was able to watch the game, but he came right back after he woke up.”

Liam shifted in his blankets and curled his legs in closer to himself.  _ ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ _ was playing for only the  _ second _ time that day, but sparing a quick glance at the time on the cable box, he thought he might be able to fit in a third view if he wasn’t interrupted. 

This was a familiar scene, and what weekends had looked like for three weeks now. His roommates were as supportive as they could be. Corey supplied him with pints of ice cream that he really didn’t need to be eating, Mason was a shoulder to cry on whenever Liam suddenly remembered something he’d already cried about a bunch of times already, and occasionally Nolan would sit on the couch with him and join in on the movie binge. Liam knew they would all prefer it if he wasn’t so mopey and pathetic, but he couldn’t exactly bring himself to care. 

He’d kind of forgotten what weekends were like when he wasn’t spending all of them with Theo. Before, he’d done things like grade papers or even go to the gym on Saturdays and Sundays, but Liam’s motivations for work flew out the window now as soon as the clock hit three PM on Friday afternoon. His friends had tried at first to get him back to normal by inviting him to do things and go places, but Liam never felt like it. Now that he was stuck at home, he felt like he was trapped there entirely. He didn’t want to go anywhere on the weekends if it wasn’t Theo’s house.

It was pretty needless to say that he wasn’t getting over it well.

Liam sniffed as he watched the main character, a disastrous thirty-something year old woman named Bridget drink herself into a crying fest, and he couldn’t help but resonate. She didn’t have a clue what was going on with herself either, and Liam wanted to point at the screen and say  _ “me too.” _ The movie had started playing the second weekend after he and Theo broke up, and it hadn’t turned off for more than a few hours since then. 

On the upside, Hugh Grant wasn’t all that bad to look at, even if his character wasn’t particularly likeable. He’d look at him for an hour and a half instead of resorting to the alternative passtime of crying into the sofa cushions until he fell asleep.

“Hey, Liam?” Nolan said, coming up behind him. He braced his hands on the back of the couch and looked down at him sympathetically. “Do you think you might want to get up?”

“I’m only halfway done,” Liam murmured, his face half-buried in a lump he’d made out of one of the many blankets he dragged over to the couch.

“ _ Okay _ ,” Nolan said patiently. “Well, what if you watched a  _ different _ movie after this one’s over again?” He suggested. “Maybe it’ll refresh you a little bit.”

Liam didn’t say anything in response, choosing to ignore the suggestion altogether. He had yet to find a movie that made him feel as numb but distracted as this one, so he wasn’t in any hurry to change it. 

Nolan sighed and retreated back to Mason and Corey, who Liam knew weren’t going to protest his presence there. If there was a mean one out of all of them, it was Nolan, so if  _ he _ wasn’t doing anything, neither of the other ones would, either.

_ He bet that  _ Theo _ would be able to get him back on his feet _ , Liam thought bitterly.  _ If he wasn’t the exact reason he was incapacitated anyway.  _

His weekends continued to be spent on the couch eating ice cream with the movie playing for a few weeks, and he wasn’t budging.

+++

Sometimes, Liam would get to Sunday night and be feeling a little better about himself and his situation. After a long weekend of ignoring his problems and numbing his brain with brainfreeze and more sugar an adult his age should be able to take, he was sometimes able to smile at himself in the mirror and convince himself, even if for just a few hours, that things were going to be okay. He’d talk himself up in his head, telling himself what a bad bitch he was, he didn’t need Theo to survive, and that things with Jack would get better eventually.

Then, of course, he’d go into work and be completely reset and exhausted by the time Monday was over.

It was rough for the first few weeks, and it didn’t get that much better. At home, he was able to be the slug that he felt like on the inside, but at work, he had to keep up the ruse of business as usual. That meant grading papers, teaching his class, stopping himself from picking fights with other teachers, and keeping a good relationship with his students and boss. He loved his job - he always had and he always would - but it was a lot more exhausting when he was handling the weight of an intense heartbreak on top of his other responsibilities.

On the bad days, he’d be at work and everything would remind him of Theo. Sometimes when he opened his email log, he’d always imagine there being a new one from him, even though Theo hadn’t emailed him in months even when they were dating. Sometimes it was just hints of him when he remembered inside jokes they shared about aspects of Liam’s job. Sometimes it hit him so hard that Liam felt like he’d never been hurt this badly before.

Their first scheduled biweekly meeting passed without anything said about it. Theo didn’t text or email, since they had the unspoken agreement that any and all connection was cut off just to be safe. When he’d gotten the reminder notification on his phone telling him to go to Theo’s house after work, Liam had been in the middle of teaching and had to pause for several seconds before he remembered where he had been going with himself. That night, he went home, started up _ Bridget Jones’s Diary _ early, and caused his roommates to stifle their groans.

Liam wasn’t dumb enough to have convinced himself he was good at hiding it, either. He knew that he came into work looking tired, and he knew that his students noticed it as well. He wasn’t good at keeping his emotions off his face in the best of times, and sometimes he gave up on trying entirely. He sat at his desk while his kids were doing independent work and looked just as sad and tired as he was on the outside as he was on the inside.

One day when he’d let his students start doing their homework early, he felt Cass staring at him before she spoke up. “Mr. Dunbar?” She asked. Liam looked up at her from where he was focused on a mundane article about teaching supplies. Her eyebrows were tilted up with concern and she had that frown on her face again. “Are you okay? You’ve looked really sad recently,” She said.

Liam gave her a weak smile and shook his head. He almost couldn’t believe she actually didn’t know by now from Jack. “I’m okay. It’s just been a rough couple of weeks,” He said, waving it off. 

She didn’t look entirely convinced, her eyebrows knit together as she analyzed him, but she didn’t ask anything else. 

Just a second later, Liam accidentally made eye contact with Jack, who had the cap of his pen resting against his chin. His sharp eyes looked into Liam’s in a way that startled him, and Liam dropped his gaze right away. 

That was the worst part of all. He missed Theo so intensely that it  _ hurt _ , but more than that, he was always reminded of why he couldn’t have him in the first place. Whenever he looked at Jack, he saw all of his mistakes, and it brought him right back to the cold, complicated reality that wasn’t all ice cream and moping. 

Jack had been downright enraged for the first week or two. He was disruptive again and let his grades slip, but there was nothing Liam could imagine trying to do about it that wouldn’t end up with him getting lashed at by him. Luckily enough, though, he had gone down to mad as more time passed, and currently, Liam estimated that he’d turned down to a simmer. He did his work, and he wasn’t trying to burn holes in Liam with his laser-glare or anything, but Liam still caught him staring at him. It hurt all the same. He wished there was something he could do to apologize, but he felt like staying quiet and out of the way was his best option. He let Jack process on his own.

+++

A few days later, Liam was looking through Google News on his computer towards the end of class, trying to find something to recommend his students write about for their current events assignment. Sometimes they needed a little extra push to start, so he liked to throw out some headlines here and there for anyone who didn’t want to ask upfront.

“There are some interesting topics this week,” Liam said, scanning the headlines. “You could write about the newest thing our president has said that made people mad. Or the backlash after an actor’s Instagram post,” Liam suggested to whoever was listening. “Or…”

He scrolled down further, but once you get to a certain point in Google News, it stops giving current events and starts recommending articles based off of your search history. Liam soon hit the articles about an update for a game he played occasionally, a cool new recipe, and one that was more jarring than the others.

**Raeken Resorts Set to Start Work on New Jamaica Location  
** _ Raeken Resorts is set to break ground on a new beach resort in Jamaica sometime in summer 2020. Theo Raeken, president of Raeken resorts and designer of the new location, says… _

Liam stopped himself where the preview ended and shook himself off before he could fall into it and read more. Google News was a  _ snitch _ .

Liam stared at it for a second. The headline was accompanied by a new picture of Theo that he must have had done recently, since he was choosing to wear his glasses and had a shirt on that Liam remembered as being new. He looked perfect as always, and his face was dignified and president-like as he looked in the camera. Liam remembered that face, but he also remembered the much more casual, sweet one that Theo wore when Liam was around. His heart ached.

He wanted to reach for his phone and text Theo to congratulate him on securing Jamaica, but as soon as his fingers hit the screen, he put the phone down again. What was he even supposed to say? It had been a month and a half since they last spoke by then, and there wasn’t any way to bring it up without it seeming like there were ulterior motives behind it.  _ “Congratulations on starting work in Jamaica! Let’s pretend that we didn’t fantasize about you taking me there and having sex on the beach before everything fell apart in our hands.” _

Instead, Liam stared at his phone sadly and exited the news website, forgetting what he’d been doing in the first place entirely. Some of his students gave him weird looks, but Liam didn’t notice. He started looking at the wood grain of his desk instead, running his index finger along the lines until a student asked him another question and he had to focus on real life again.

+++

Over time, Liam would admit that things weren’t a living hell. Eventually, he was able to go an entire weekend without being curled up in a ball the entire time, and sometimes he even went out. He’d been to The Pelican a few times with his roommates, and he tried his best not to think about the night of his twenty-sixth birthday, even if the ghost of Theo was still wherever he went. He numbed it with tequila shots for no good reason and woke up with a monster headache, but it was better than sitting in the booth and missing him. Bad coping mechanisms aside, he was still doing better than he had been.

Work wasn’t as terrible as he thought it might be either. Among his worries about Jack and his well-being, he had also wondered when the other shoe was going to drop and Jack was going to decide to ruin his life. There were so many ways he could do it. He could tell the teachers, who wouldn’t know whether to believe him but would badger Liam about it constantly. He could tell the students, who didn’t care if it were real or not and then Liam would be known not only for his age, but for an affair. Even worse, he could’ve told principal Martin, who would yell at him in front of everyone with no hesitation. It made him feel nauseous to think about what could’ve happened, and so when he wasn’t exhausted and fighting through the constant tightness in his chest, he was waiting for someone to break out in shocked laughter as the secret finally came out.

So far, however, Jack didn’t seem hell-bent on it. Cass still didn’t seem to know about any of it, despite being the person Jack was closest to, and neither did anyone else. Mrs. Martin asked him a few times what ended up happening with Liam’s meetings with Theo once he stopped going, but she was satisfied with the explanation that they thought they weren’t necessary anymore. In the teachers’ lounge, none of his co-workers were accusing him of being a sugar baby like he was afraid of. He considered himself oddly safe, even if only in that regard.

He wondered why Jack wouldn’t want to do that, since he knew he deserved it if he decided to. Liam knew he probably would’ve done it if Mr. Philips or one of his other teachers had done something as egregious as Liam - hell, he would have tried to get it published in the  _ papers _ if he were as angry as Jack was. All he could do was feel lucky that he wasn’t losing his job.

Jack still found ways through the weeks to make Liam miserable though, even without trying. Looking at him reminded Liam of everything he had done but also the person he missed the most, and on some level, Jack was trying to do that on purpose. Liam caught him looking at him more and more as time went on and Jack’s anger started to die down.

It would be in the middle of class, mostly when the class was working quietly and Liam was trying not to zone out at his desk. Jack would catch his eye from his peripheral vision, and he’d look over just to find that he was staring at him with an often unreadable expression on his face. Each time, Liam looked away in a hurry, not wanting to prompt anything else that might come his way. 

It was on a particularly bad day that Liam finally just looked back. He was too tired from a bad night’s rest and waking up throughout the night dreaming of the night he and Theo broke up, so when he turned to look at Jack, he didn’t look away.

They held each other’s gaze for a few seconds, both just staring at each other. Liam knew well and good that Jack would be able to tell how tired he was of everything, but he didn’t even care. He let Jack get a good look at him, offering himself for whatever jab Jack thought he should give him, then blinked his focus elsewhere when he got too sad to keep it up.

He was pathetic, and now they both knew it.

And sure enough, that same day after class, Jack came up to his desk after everyone else left. Liam tensed up, squared his shoulders, sat up straight, and took a deep breath nervously. Jack hadn’t spoken a word to him directly in weeks, so whatever this was was going to be something built up for  _ awhile _ . All Liam could do was brace himself for it.

“I’m still pissed off at you,” Jack said bluntly, a hard-set scowl on his face. Liam gulped, disregarding his language entirely. He deserved that. “Don’t get that wrong. I’m pissed at you for dating my dad and meeting with him about me, and I’m pissed at you for never telling me anything about it. You both kept secrets from me for  _ months _ and I had to sit here in this classroom and go home every night completely  _ clueless _ .” The hand that wasn’t holding the strap of his backpack clenched into a tense fist by Jack’s side, but Liam tried to stay as strong as he could and look him in the eyes. “I don’t even want to  _ know _ what you told him about me and how he changed towards me because of you,” He said. Liam’s eyes fell to the surface of his desk and he nodded solemnly. 

“I really liked it when my dad started talking to me again. It had been a really long time since I felt like that. Like I was actually his  _ kid _ again. It felt good,” He said firmly, hurt creeping into his voice. “Even if it was all because of you. It cheapens the deal a lot, but was still something.” Liam wasn’t exactly sure where Jack was going with this, but he was pretty sure he was still being yelled at. He wanted to tell him that he was wrong, but he felt like he shouldn’t interrupt. “He’s still talking to me now, so don’t worry about that part,” Jack said. A short pang of relief blew through Liam’s lungs. He’d never thought Theo would go back to his old self after him, but it was good to hear it anyway. 

Jack took a breath and sighed it back out, his scowl breaking slightly. “But I liked it better when he was happy.” 

Liam looked up at him, surprised by the quiet voice of resignation Jack had suddenly taken on. 

“Before he met you, whenever that was, he was like a robot. All he cared about was his next job and being at the office, and when he was at home he was always just on his computer in his study. It was really hard to live with him like that. But  _ now _ ,” Jack sighed. “He  _ mopes _ . He’s not even a  _ robot _ , he’s just some kind of  _ ghost _ , acting like I don’t notice him crying or walking around the house like he’s not actually there. You  _ fucked _ him up,” Jack shot. “I’ve never seen him as happy as he was when he was with you, and now he’s not even his usual boring self.”

Liam bit his tongue. In all this, he hadn’t been thinking much about how Theo reacted to their breakup. He’d been too caught up in damage control with Jack and trying to forget about being in love with Theo that he hadn’t really considered that Theo was on the other end of this too. Jack had every right to be pissed at him after lying to him and then breaking his dad’s heart on top of that. Liam swallowed hard.

“...So whatever you have to do to fix it,  _ do _ it.”

Liam’s eyes shot up back to Jack, unsure if he heard that correctly as his heart skipped. “ _ W-what _ ?” He stammered, his lips parted in surprise.

Jack rolled his eyes at him. “Believe me, I wish there was another option, but I hate seeing him feel like this more than I hate the idea of you two being together. I’ll get over that part eventually, but it’ll take awhile, so you’d better start getting me used to it now,” Jack said, starting to turn away from his desk. Liam knew he looked like an idiot, mouth opening and closing like a fish as Jack started to walk away. “He’s leaving for Jamaica soon.”

Liam still didn’t know what to say when Jack reached the doorway, staring at his back as he walked away. Jack paused, breathed, and turned back to him for just a second.

“I’m not calling you  _ ‘Dad’ _ or anything, but  _ fix _ it.”

Liam spent the rest of his lunchbreak in stunned silence.

+++

Liam gave himself some credit for planning on thinking everything through first.

He got done the rest of his workday about as well as he could, even though he admittedly felt  _ very  _ winded and slightly dizzy, and then went home. He ate dinner with Mason, Corey, Alec, and Nolan, since they were all for once in the house at the same time of night, and he’d even talked like everything was normal. In Liam’s mind, everything was, since he wasn’t even thinking about going to see Theo until later. He thought he might email Theo and invite him to talk this out like adults, and maybe they’d meet on a Saturday afternoon. Liam wanted to have his wits together, his thoughts organized, and his feelings in check before he made any major decisions.

Being himself, he only ever really cleaned when he needed to think about something, so Liam busied himself with his cluttered room as he considered all of the ways he could go about doing this. He didn’t want to come on too strong on the off-chance that Theo  _ didn’t _ want him back, but he wanted to get it across that he had missed Theo with every cell in his body - just without it being on the wrong side of passionate. He cleaned out his shirt drawer and discarded some of the random pieces of trash that had ended up in there in the bin by the door.

After his shirt drawer, he moved on to his sock drawer, which was in more disarray than anything else. Bending down, he started taking pair after pair of socks out of the drawer and throwing the mismatched ones onto the floor to deal with later. His focus was temporarily reset on cleaning and only that, so it was a shock to his system when he pulled away a pair of grey socks and found the black watch case underneath.

Liam paused, hearing the socks hit the floor with a dull thud where he had thrown them, and stared at the case. The watch Theo had given him had slipped his mind - after he’d buried it in his drawer in the first place, he had never taken it back out, not even when he wanted to. Eventually he had forgotten about it entirely, but  _ now _ \- now Liam was remembering everything.

He took the box out of the drawer with shaky hands and opened it up on top of his dresser. The silver and blue watch was still in perfect condition from the last time Liam had worn it, and he couldn’t resist; he took it out and slowly slipped it onto his left wrist. It felt cool against his skin and sent a shiver up his spine. He imagined Theo’s fingertips there, putting it on him for the first time, and his lips kissing behind his ear afterwards. 

It made Liam’s blood run both cold and hot at the same time, and as he looked at himself in the mirror, he felt  _ right _ . The comfortable clothes he had put on after work didn’t match the watch, but it didn’t matter. He remembered what it felt like to have this little piece of Theo with him wherever he went, and it was overwhelming in the best way.

That was what set Liam off. He didn’t want to only have this little piece of Theo, he wanted  _ all _ of him, and now that he had Jack’s permission, there was nothing that was stopping him.  _ Fuck _ talking things out like adults,  _ fuck _ organized thoughts, and  _ fuck _ being  _ “too passionate.” _

He threw his bedroom door open after unknowingly and haphazardly slipping on two left shoes, ignoring the loud noise the door made against the wall. Mason, Corey, Nolan, and Alec all looked at him in surprise from the couch when they heard him come out of his room, but it didn’t take them long to notice the watch on his wrist. Nolan’s grin split his face. “ _ Get _ him, Liam!” Nolan called, followed by the hollering of the rest of his friends. Liam didn’t even look at them, his eyes set straight ahead.

Liam almost forgot to turn his car off when he pulled into Theo’s driveway, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t thinking about the last time he had been here or the small divot where the uprooted flowers used to be as he went right up to Theo’s front door; he wasn’t thinking about anything but the love of his life. He took a deep, shuddery breath and knocked on the door hard before his nerves could possibly get in the way.

In real-time, it only took a few seconds for someone to answer the door, but the time Liam waited felt more like hours. He chewed on his lip anxiously, trying to think of what he was going to say, but he didn’t have too much time to debate. Instead of Alice like Liam was expecting, Theo opened the door.

He stood there in grey sweatpants and a white t-shirt with messy hair and glasses, wide awake and stunned to see Liam there. One hand was on the doorframe, the other hung limply by his side, and Liam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Theo look this  _ soft _ . It made his heart jump in his chest, and he knew he was it - this was who he was meant to be with, and he wasn’t about to screw it up. 

“Hey,” Theo said softly, seemingly afraid that Liam wasn’t actually there. His eyes were blown wide and his fingers twitched against the doorframe. “What are you-?”

“I miss you like  _ hell _ ,” Liam blurted out, knowing full and well that he was about to send every wall he’d built up over the last few weeks crashing down. He didn’t care. He’d let Theo in no matter what. Theo blinked at him, and Liam heard him suck in a breath. “I don’t know if Jack talked to you, but he talked to me, and I-” Liam rushed, desperate not to trip over his words and fumble this. “He told me how you’ve been and he told me to fix it, so I’m here. I’m  _ here _ , and if there is anything I can  _ possibly _ to do to fix-”

Liam was cut off as Theo surged forward, his hands like hot brands on his face as he pulled him in for a kiss. His knees went weak under him and he let out the most perfectly pathetic whimper of his life as he fell against Theo, wrapping his arms around his neck and pulling him in tight. He wanted to cry, not that he had any choice. Hot tears were already welling up at the feel of Theo,  _ warm _ and  _ real _ and  _ perfect _ under his hands, and that something that was just so overwhelmingly  _ Theo _ that felt like coming home. He realized in that moment that he had missed Theo’s kiss more than he’d ever missed anything in his entire life, and wondered how he had ever lived without it. 

Theo broke away with a gasp, their foreheads resting together, both of them desperate and needing to stay close. “I love you,” Theo choked, and Liam noticed the tears running down his face. “I  _ love _ you,  _ God _ , I love you-”

Liam almost couldn’t bring himself to speak, his words coming out in more of a wet laugh than a sentence. “I love you too,” He gasped, feeling Theo’s watery smile against his mouth. “I wanted to tell you that the night you met my roommates, and  _ fuck _ , I haven’t stopped thinking about it since,” Liam breathed. He leaned in to press one more hard kiss against Theo’s lips before Theo wrapped his arms around him tight and pulled him in, bringing him into the hug that they’d both needed ever since Theo walked out of Liam’s door. They breathed against each other, eyes closed and fingers clutching at each other over their shirts as they tried to soak in every bit of each other to make up for lost time. Liam didn’t regret his decision to run out of the house in mismatched shoes one bit.

They were both too caught up in each other to really register the noise behind them, the thudding of Jack coming down the stairs. They only broke out of their trance and crushing hold when he spoke up.

“I’m still not calling you ‘Dad,’” Jack said, and both Theo and Liam looked at him in surprise. He was standing there with his arms folded, clearly a little uncomfortable about this whole display, but there was a tiny smile creeping at the corners of his lips and in his eyes that even Jack couldn’t hide. Liam barked a short, shocked laugh.

“That’s perfectly fine, Jack,” Liam sniffed, reaching one hand up to brush stray tear paths off his cheeks. 

Jack looked them both up and down once, trying to set his face into something more serious than it was then, but still came up short. Liam pretended not to notice for his sake. “Now close the door, you’re letting bugs in.”

Theo stifled a laugh and didn’t pull away from Liam as he maneuvered them so they were standing out on the front step. He pulled the door shut behind them, then went right back to his hold on Liam. Any other time, Liam would’ve joked about Theo crushing him, but he was content to stay right where he was with his face buried in Theo’s shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” Liam murmured, slightly muffled by Theo’s t-shirt, but if the shaking breath Theo took was anything to go by, he heard Liam loud and clear. “You shoulda’ seen me these past few weeks. I was  _ awful _ . I can’t believe my roommates didn’t throw me out.”

Theo laughed into Liam’s hair, kissing there right afterwards. “I’m sure I wasn’t any better,” Theo sighed. “I was terrible.  _ But _ ,” He amended, his voice perking up a little. Liam looked up at him, his chin still pressed to Theo’s chest. Theo tilted his head down to kiss him. “You’re here now.”

Liam melted into his kiss effortlessly, like no time had passed at all. He’d never tasted anything as sweet as Theo, and it never changed. “Right where I’m supposed to be,” He breathed when he pulled away, and Theo held onto him tighter.

There were still things that needed to happen and serious conversations to be had, but those thoughts only ever bounced off against the bubble they put themselves in that night. There on Theo’s front step, with Jack inside and all secrets revealed, they held onto each other like they had no other worry in the world.

In that moment, they really, _truly_ didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEAH!!!! That's our SHIP!!!  
> Come on, you know I couldn't keep them broken up for long. How long did we really think they could resist each other??
> 
> Also, ik Jack is my own character, but he grew on me so much. I love him. He might appear other places, too.
> 
> Just one more chapter to go guys :) This journey of writing and updating has been so great and I'm getting so emotional thinking about it coming to an end :,) But don't worry, I think you'll like it.
> 
> Let me know what you're thinking in the comments :) This time you can yell at me in a good way!!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


	13. Summer Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The school year has ended, but Theo, Liam, and Jacks' story is far from over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god. 13/13. Might cry as I'm typing out these notes.

Cleaning out his classroom at the end of each year always seemed like a momentous occasion for Liam. Desks and chairs were stacked up in the hallway, posters and bulletin boards were taken off the walls and dismantled, and his classroom became a blank slate for a new year. He’d always look back at it all and remember what had gone on in years before and this one.

This year was especially big. His fourth year of teaching was now officially over, which meant he had been through an entire generation of students at Beacon Hills High School. Yesterday night, he had watched some of the students he’d known since they were only little fourteen and fifteen year olds graduate and move on, and  _ yes _ , he’d definitely cried. He’d said goodbye to all of the ones that came to visit him and tried not to be too much of a mess, but it was hard. The end of a school year, while full of the relief of starting summer vacation, was always emotional. Grades were moving up and moving on, and in just a few months, Liam would meet an entirely new class as they came into his classroom, full of new faces and new personalities. It was overwhelming in the best of ways.

The end of the year cleanout was one of those moments that he felt should be shared, even with people who didn’t quite understand why he was so emotional about it. Usually, Mason, Corey, and Nolan would help Liam pack up his classroom at the end of the year - the janitors had to do a deep clean of the carpet and someone came in to slap a fresh coat of white paint on the walls every summer - but usually they ended up complaining more than helping. It didn’t exactly make for a great end to a big occasion for them to be tired and noncommittal, but luckily for them  _ and _ Liam, his roommates were off the hook this year...and possibly many more to come.

It had only taken one mention of all the work Liam needed to do for Theo to volunteer his and Jacks’ help. Liam had tried to tell him he didn’t need to do that and he was fine doing it alone, but Theo wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d always loved to take care of Liam in any way he could, so Liam knew there was no changing Theo’s mind.

So a few days after the school year ended, when all exams were graded and everyone was officially moving onto summer vacation, Liam found himself peeling posters off the walls and moving furniture around with his boyfriend and his son. Jack was surprisingly eager to get into a classroom again, but Liam was pretty sure that had a lot to do with the fact that they were taking it apart and not putting it together. He was having fun taking things down and putting them in boxes, and actually being a really big help. Theo wasn’t even paying him to do it as a chore, either. 

Liam smiled to himself as he watched the two of them mill around with purpose. At the beginning of the semester, he’d never imagined  _ this _ would be the outcome of everything. He definitely wasn’t mad about it.

The three of them had been spending a lot more time together recently. The natural progression of things meant that Jack and Theo saw Liam around more often than not, and while it was awkward at first, they were all growing used to it. 

Liam was getting used to dating a man with a kid. Beforehand, when they had stupidly decided to keep Jack out of the equation and consider him something of ‘a bridge to cross when they got to it,’ it hadn’t been an issue Liam had thought about. Now, Liam was realizing that being with someone with a family was definitely a lot more complicated than someone who had never been married and had no kids, but he was learning. For the first few weeks, it was a lot about learning boundaries and making sure that Jack was comfortable with him while also maintaining a good relationship with Theo. 

Theo was also figuring out boundaries. He’d never really dated anyone after he and Tracy got divorced, so again, having a son hadn’t been much of a factor in his social decisions before now. He made sure to keep up time with Liam while also respecting Jack and his comfort, and he was doing a good job. He also tried to spend more time with Jack to make up for lost time, which was also working. Even though neither of them knew how, they did things like go fishing, just some classic  _ father-son _ stuff. Liam thought it was adorable.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment of all came from Jack. He was the one most at risk in this situation, and Liam had definitely been able to tell that Jack was feeling the pressure of it. 

In the beginning, tensions between the three of them were definitely high. Although the initial anger and betrayal was a thing of the past by the time Theo and Liam got back together, that didn’t mean Jack was  _ completely _ comfortable with everything that was going on; he was making sacrifices and learning how to deal with it as he went along for the sake of his dad. In the beginning, Jack would hole himself up in his room and ghost through the house when he had to when Liam was around, which Liam understood - it was weird having your father date someone new, especially when that  _ someone _ is your teacher, of all people. It progressed from there to awkward conversation and fleeting eye contact, but eventually, Jack was able to sit in the same room with them, even if he did leave after a few minutes. Luckily, a few weeks in, things started to get a lot better, and he joined them for dinners and was even starting to talk to Liam like a friend instead of an outsider. 

Jack finished off his sophomore year on the honor roll with all  _ A’s _ and  _ B’s _ for the second semester, meaning he was on the honor roll for the first time since his parents got divorced. Theo and Liam couldn’t have been more proud of him. The night he showed Theo the report card, Liam had been there, and Theo proposed that they should go out for ice cream after dinner to celebrate. Liam had tried to leave and let them do their own thing, but that wasn’t the case at all.  _ Jack _ was the one who asked him to stay, and Liam wasn’t about to reject that.

Ever since then, Liam had been feeling better about it all. Things were certainly looking up.

That wasn’t to say there weren't still complicated things that happened outside of the Raeken house. Theo and Liam had still had to tell other people about their relationship, but none of them were as hard as it was telling Jack, at least.

Mrs. Martin was obviously  _ not _ happy about it. When they walked into her office together to tell her, Liam could tell that if Theo wasn’t there, she would’ve blown a fuse. Nevertheless, she cooperated, especially since Theo played the donor card. They couldn’t afford to lose the donation, so even though Theo wouldn’t have taken it away anyway, she was a lot more perceptive to their needs and open to making accommodations for them. They decided to keep it on the low with Liam’s co-workers, since there wasn’t a lot they could do there, but Mrs. Martin said that there would be consequences for people giving Liam a hard time about it if they  _ did _ end up finding out one way or another.

Then there had been telling Liam’s roommates, which wasn’t that bad. Mason hadn’t had to be cautious about it, since Liam was the one who broke them up in the first place, so the entire house was excited for him. It came with a lot of questions about when he was going to move out and how they were going to afford rent without him, but they were all happy for him and didn’t question things too much. Jack had even met them before over dinner, which Liam had been a lot more stressed out about than when Theo had met them for the first time, but things went smoothly. Jack even thought they were cool, even if it was in an awkward adult-trying-too-hard kind of way.

Probably the worst of all was telling Tracy. Unlike Mrs. Martin, she hadn’t had  _ any _ trouble voicing her opinions on their relationship and the various problems she saw with it, and it had been hard to convince her that they were fine. Liam could tell that she wasn’t only worried for Jack, but worried for Theo too, and it made him like her a whole lot more than he had before. They’d sat down with her and talked it all out once she’d calmed down a little, telling her how things were going to work and that there weren’t going to be a lot of changes with Jack or his custody schedule, either. They made it clear that they weren’t trying to take him from her, and that Liam was trustworthy and wouldn’t cause him any _ (more) _ trouble. She’d been hard to convince to begin with, but she was definitely harder to convince about the trip they were planning to take to Jamaica with Jack once Theo started work on the resort.

Liam smiled to himself. He couldn’t wait, and he knew Theo and Jack couldn’t, either. He was looking forward to the vacation, and now that Jack was older and Theo was making a lot more time for him even when he worked, they all knew he’d enjoy it a lot more than he did when he was younger. Liam was already imagining surf and sand, and he and Jack had talked in-depth about what kind of intense sand castle building competitions they were going to have. The vacation wasn’t exactly going to be the couple’s retreat Theo and Liam had imagined to begin with, but Liam thought he might actually like this plan better if it meant he could continue building his connection with Jack back up again.

Speaking of Jack, he was wincing as he tried to take posters off the walls without ripping the paint. “Just rip it down,” Liam said, waving it off when he noticed. “They’re painting over it anyway, they don’t actually care.”

Jack looked surprised at that, but he didn’t need to be convinced any further. He took a World War II poster down in only a second, a couple pieces of cheap paint and tape coming off with it, and he looked at it with satisfaction. “You know, I never noticed how unorganized your classroom actually is,” Jack said.

Liam rolled his eyes lightheartedly. “Let’s not throw stones, Mr. _ ‘I-write-in-all-caps _ ,’” Liam scoffed, moving a stepladder over to a different wall of the room to work on different posters. 

Theo snickered. “He got that from me, sorry,” Theo said, coming over to ruffle Liam’s hair. Liam playfully swatted his hand away and grinned at him while Jack made a gagging noise over where he was standing. With how far they’d come, Liam was able to be a hundred-percent confident that he was only kidding.

As the classroom got more and more bare, the three of them looked around it more. It really did look a lot different when all the personality was gone from it. “I can’t imagine teaching in a room like this,” Liam said, standing back with a scowl on his face. “It looks like a prison.”

“This is what Mrs. Murphy’s classroom looks like,” Jack commented. “There’s nothing in there.  _ And _ the air conditioner is always going, so it’s freezing in the winter.”

Liam shuddered at the idea. “Yeah, I’d rather not think about Murphy’s classroom. I had her when  _ I _ went here.”

Liam tried not to bring up his age too much when it came to Jack, but just like everything else, Jack had grown to be used to it. Sometimes, like now, it was even an inside joke between them. 

They continued to clean everything up. Liam helped the janitors get ahead on the floor cleaning by sweeping up any visible dirt and picking up pieces of trash, Theo took Liam’s instructions to shove things in the supply cabinet any way he possibly could make it fit, and Jack kept up taking the posters and artwork off the walls. Liam even saw him reading some of them as he took them down, which made him grin.

  
He was just about to turn and start taking things off of his desk to pack them up when there was a knock on the open doorway. All three of their heads turned to look at who was there, and since Liam assumed it was Mrs. Martin coming to make passive-aggressive comments, he was pleasantly satisfied. A smile spread across his face as soon as he saw him in the doorway. 

“Hey!” Liam exclaimed excitedly, walking over to the door. Mr. Philips smiled at him fondly, opening his arms for a hug and patting his back when Liam took it. “I didn’t know you were stopping by!”

“Well, I figured I’d come by and see how you’re doing after your first class graduation,” Mr. Philips said with a grin. “You cried, didn’t you?”

Liam rolled his eyes but nodded. There wasn’t any way he was getting past him with that. 

Mr. Philips’s eyes fell on Theo and Jack, who were both still doing work but subtly paying attention to Liam. His eyes lit up with mirth. “I also came by to see if you needed any help packing up, but I see you already  _ have _ some!”

Liam grinned and turned to Theo. Theo smiled at him and took the hint to come forward. “Mr. Philips, this is Theo and Jack,” Liam introduced them, motioning to Theo and then Jack, who was choosing to keep his distance a few feet away. Jack gave a polite wave and Theo reached a hand out for him to shake.

“It’s good to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you,” Theo said, shaking Mr. Philips’s hand. 

“Likewise,” Mr. Philips said sincerely, but there was still a hint of amusement in his tone as he remembered the long conversations they’d had about him. Theo looked over at Liam with interest, but Liam just scratched the back of his neck and tried not to blush. Mr. Philips clapped his hands together once he was done with Theo’s. “Well,” He said, taking a breath and looking around Liam’s classroom. “Since I’m here, I might as well get to work, shouldn’t I? What do we need, posters down and desks in the hallway? I still remember how to stack them...”

Mr. Philips went right for one of the chairs and Liam protested. “Well,  _ wait _ , your knee,” He argued, putting a hand on the top of the chair so he couldn’t lift it up. “You really don’t have to-”

Mr. Philips waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. My doctor’s got me on the good stuff. I’m not _too_ _old_ to do some heavy lifting,” He said, fake-offended that Liam would worry. His eyes flitted back to Theo. “Theo,” He prompted, making him look up. “You look like you can move some furniture around. Care to help me?”

Liam glanced back at him with a sympathetic look, knowing that Theo was definitely about to get one of those  _ talks _ , but he wasn’t worried. Theo simply nodded and smiled, ready to go. After everything he’d been through with Liam’s nosy roommates, especially Mason, Theo was well-versed in ‘father-figure’ conversations. Mr. Philips took the chair and headed out into the hallway to start a stack, but Liam caught Theo by the wrist before he could walk out.

They shared a moment of silence between them, but Liam couldn’t stay serious for long. His lips broke into a soft smile as he looked at Theo, and all he could do was reach up and touch Theo’s face. “I love you,” He reminded him; there was nothing else he needed to say in that moment. 

Theo leaned down to kiss him, one of his fingers tracing along Liam’s hairline. “I love you too,” He said when he broke away to go join Mr. Philips. “I’ll be good. Promise.” Liam smiled.

When Theo went into the hallway, he left Jack and Liam alone in the classroom. They worked quietly, the only noises being the sticky sounds of tape peeling away from the walls and the noise of plastic laminated posters waving as they were taken down. Jack stood on a stool on one side of the room while Liam worked on the one across from him. 

Even though Jack’s wall wasn’t done, he moved his stool over so that he was only a few feet away from Liam. Liam looked at him curiously as Jack started working there instead, but didn’t question him. 

“So…” Jack started a few minutes later, cutting the silence. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

Liam raised an eyebrow in confusion. “For what?” He asked, looking at Jack questioningly. 

Jack shrugged. “For everything. I mean, I wouldn’t have passed your class if you hadn’t stepped in. You made sure I didn’t fail my sophomore year,” He said. “...And you make my dad happy.” He was trying to keep his voice steady, but Liam caught the way it dropped into an embarrassed mumble towards the end. “So, uh. Thanks for that. And I’m sorry for being such a shitty kid.”

Liam had to grin at that. He laughed quietly to himself and shook his head. “I never thought you were a shitty kid,” He said truthfully. Jack’s eyes widened next to him, but Liam went on. “You were just having some trouble. You remind me a lot of myself when I was your age, actually.”

That made Jack cringe. “That’s…”

Liam laughed. “Yeah, that was cheesy, wasn’t it?” He cringed apologetically and scratched the back of his head. They went back to work, dropping the posters on the floor to pick up later each time one was taken off.

The sounds of posters being taken down stopped for a minute, and Liam glanced next to him. Jack was holding the poster about the Civil Rights Movement in his hand, reading it over and looking at the pictures. Liam remembered that he had really enjoyed the part of class when they were learning about it and smiled to himself as he turned back to his own posters.

Liam heard the soft talking of Theo and Mr. Philips in the hallway before he heard Jack speak up.

“Y’know, maybe I’ll be a history teacher someday.”

Liam’s brain stalled and his heart swelled. Jack didn’t see the way a large, watery smile broke across his face, but when he looked over towards the doorway where they were standing, he knew Theo and Mr. Philips did. They mirrored it, looking at Liam with pride, already knowing what he was thinking about everything coming full-circle.

As Liam looked at the three of them, all he could do was try not to cry right then and there. He 

was standing in a room with the man he loved, the man who got him into teaching, and the student that Liam had now done the same to; standing with three people who changed his life for the better. 

Theo’s eyes locked on his and Liam took a deep, shuddery breath.

His heart couldn’t be any more full.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap!!
> 
> Holy. Shit.   
> I don't even really know what to say to actually put all of my thoughts into words right now. I think that all I can say is thank you. Thank you for all of the overwhelming love and support I've gotten on this fic. Some of the comments I've gotten on here have made me laugh, made me cry, and more importantly, made me feel motivated and capable of doing more.   
> I'm so glad that I got to do this and share with you guys. To think it's been less than a month since I started this fic is absolutely INSANE - I feel like I'm leaving a part of myself with this last chapter.  
> I would also like to announce that I'm thinking of writing a mini-fic to go along with this, one where Theo, Liam, and Jack take the vacation they deserve. Look out for it soon :)
> 
> I've also been gathering some fun facts about this fic as I've been writing it, so here are some things that I've wanted to share but didn't know where to.  
> \- I've said it before, but this fic was based off of a minor storyline in the TV show New Girl. Even though the storyline wasn't the same, the concept inspiration goes solely to the writers :)  
> \- All of my information about the way a classroom works comes from my lovely mother, who has worked as a teacher in high school for as long as I've been alive. Through her and going to that school, I've been able to understand some of what goes on, and I have to give credit to her for that. :)  
> \- In the early stages of writing, Theo was going to have a daughter. She didn't get past the first brainstorming notes, so she doesn't have a name, but she would've been elementary-school age and Jack's little sister.  
> \- Jack has appeared in another work of mine, "Mac N' Cheese Secrets," but he's a lot different; for one thing, he's only three or four in that fic and isn't Tracy's son, since that fic followed canon events instead of being an AU.  
> \- It was a big debate whether or not Jack was going to throw flowers or an entire flower pot, since I was worried that if Jack threw a flower pot at Theo's window, the glass would break and it would be a lot more dramatic than it needed to be. I got varying answers on whether or not that would happen, so I decided to take the safe route and have him just rip the flowers out of the garden with some type of hulk-strength.  
> \- Theo and Liam's relationship was supposed to start out with a hookup that was a lot less emotional, but I felt like that wasn't where the fic was going. I like this version better anyway lol.  
> \- And last but not least, their first time was originally going to be in Theo's office. So, yeah, you missed out on some desk sex, but I felt like it would be nicer for them to take it to the bedroom instead.
> 
> Once again, thank you all so much for everything. This has been such a fun fic to write and I'm really sad to see it finished, but at the same time, I'm ready to move on and do something new for you guys. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. More will come soon enough. :)
> 
> \- Emma  
> (grenadinepeach on tumblr)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading the first chapter!!
> 
> I'm really excited to start with this fic, so here's to hoping I keep up this inspiration! I liked the idea enough to do around four drafts of the first chapter, which is probably a good sign :) This is a lot different than the other fics I've written, so it'll be a little bit of a challenge for me, but maybe that's good.  
> I tried to do as much exposition here as I could on Liam's life, so it's not a particularly Theo-heavy chapter just yet :/ But don't worry, he'll obviously come in a lot more when things start to heat up :)
> 
> Let me know what you think of this!! Feedback inspires me more than anything!  
> tumblr: grenadinepeach


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